20 for 2020: week 43
Week of 19 October 2020
What did I want to do better this week?
Keep tweaking my organising system.
So, how did that go then?
Ask me next week.
On to 20 for 2020
If you read last week’s post, you’ll know I submitted my uni assignment (thing 8) at 11.54 last Sunday night, which was actually 10.54 Queensland time.
My uni is in Queensland . . .
I hadn’t proof read the assignment because I hadn’t left myself enough time, so with the extra hour, I read it through one last time. Maybe two. Maybe . . . I fixed up a couple of formatting glitches, picked up an apostrophe fail and resubmitted it with 15 minutes to spare. So technically, I worked on thing 8 this week.
The description of thing 8 is “Successfully complete my uni course and graduate”.
I won’t know if I’ve been successful for a couple of weeks, so I haven’t actually “successfully” completed it. I feel like I can’t cross it off until I know for sure. I mean, I’m confident that I did enough to pass but it’s not my assessment that matters. So, it’s still there, technically undone.
The uni has already told us that the graduation won’t be until next year, which means I can’t actually complete the thing this year. That’s out of my hands but I probably shouldn’t have written it like that.
However, it’s my my list, my rules. I’ve already changed one thing, so I can change this one too. Successfully completing the course equals thing done. The end. Stay tuned.
I didn’t work on any other things this week.
What did I achieve this week?
My regular check in: I stayed up to date with my weekly photojournal and my street corners project.
This is a strange week. We get a regional public holiday for Hobart Show Day on the fourth Thursday of October. The Friday is a student-free day at schools, so a lot of people take that day off too and have a long weekend. This time last year, I spent Show Day (and the following day) at my workplace, working on the second assignment of my uni course, which was due that weekend. It’s funny because one of my colleagues has just started the same course and he was talking about doing this assignment and it brought back memories of that for me. It seems Iike so long ago.
The reason I particularly remember it is that Show Day 2019 was the day I forgot to do a Duolingo lesson because I was so focused on the assignment. Duolingo is an app I’ve been using for maybe five years to reacquaint myself with the languages I learned a long time ago at uni and have fallen sadly out of practice in using.
Up until that day, I’d had a streak of 817 days and I was a little annoyed with myself for breaking it. It’s not a big thing to do. It takes about five minutes to do a lesson and I only need to do one every day to maintain the streak. I know the streak really isn’t that important and it’s the learning that matters, but still, 817 days . . . So this week, I clocked up 365 days, and the milestone reminded me it had been exactly a year.
And now, the course is over, and I am free!
It’s taking a little adjustment to get used to this. At the start of the week, I didn’t feel like anything had changed. My head was full of the assignment and, my critical voice was busy trying to tell me all of the things I could have done better and telling me I’d have done a better job if I’d spent more time on it. It said I hadn’t done enough analysis and I hadn’t used enough tools and there was probably a spelling mistake or two in there too. As it’s impossible to change any of that now, I’ve been thanking my critical voice for its suggestions and telling it that it’s really not helpful advice any more and that it can stand down now. (That’s the polite version.)
As the week went on, the thoughts about the assignment started to fade, and the critical voice started to get a bit quieter. Those thoughts started to be replaced by the realisation that I don’t have to do anything. What I do next is entirely up to me. Yes, I have a few neglected tasks I’ve been putting off until I finished the course, but in terms of more big picture stuff, I am totally in control.
And what’s more, I don’t have to make any decisions now. I can just enjoy this time of being free, uncommitted and open to exploring the possibilities. It feels good.
What didn’t go so well?
I’m on holidays this week and half of next week. I don’t need to be organised.
What do I want to do better next week?
Be calm and enjoy my break. Not go back to work on Thursday and get agitated as soon as I walk in the door.
Summary for the week
- Things completed this week: 0
- Things completed to date: 12 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20)
- Things I progressed: 1 (8)
- Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (7, 11, 13, 17, 22)
- Things not started: 4 (9, 12, 19, 21)
- Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 5
- Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
- Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
- Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7
- Days I went for a walk in the afternoon (Goal = 3 work days): 2 (plus 3)
- Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 3 work days): 1
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