Week 10 (Sunday)

Week of June 3-9

Sunday - two days of birthday parties and a day home from work totally wreaked havoc on well-laid plans.  Throw in a really good book and all hope is lost.  I kid, of course, well-laid plans would have factored in for those as best as one could.  I don't count it all as loss, I learned some good stuff in my efforts to simplify this process.  I want to be able to plan my week, but I want to have a reasonable understanding of what success will look like.  Prior to this week, if I did something twice in a day, I would count it twice.  Run two loads through the washing machine, to items done.  No matter that it would have appeared only once on my list to start with.  This week, no such thing.  Do "25 jj/10 pu/10 su" twice, that's still only checked off the list once.

So, lesson #1 - I can reasonably expect to get 35 items done per day.  If I have 30 daily items, though, that means very little forward progress.  Need to see if I can reduce the frequency of some items I think I need to do daily.

Lesson #2 - It truly is important to consult an up-to-date calendar.  I didn't and figured I was fine. When I did later look at the calendar, the parties weren't on there.

Lesson #3 - consistency is key. When consistency isn't available, plan for the minimum and be pleasantly surprised when anything gets done.

Lesson #4 - don't abandon the to-do list altogether. By Saturday I wasn't consulting it anymore and didn't cross off much.

Lesson #5 - downtime is important. I'm into a book 500 of 760 pages. It seems slightly meandering but it's still reading really well. Moderation is probably necessary.

Lesson #6 - my diet has ZERO CHANCE of success being around family members who eat bulk foods and need help being fed and aren't on a diet.

Thursday night - end of my work week. I didn't plan for a weekend of parties, but then I also didn't plan for not being at work on Friday or Lori having her own list of stuff for me to do tomorrow. There's a part of me that's tempted to put it all in Remember the Milk, but I think laziness will win out. Postponing some car cleaning, shaving and reading. Got a lot done today, though. One thing was doing stuff before work that didn't repeat - like vacuuming the living room.

Monday: 54 completed
Tuesday: 38 completed
Wednesday: 35 completed
Thursday: 32 completed (14 postponed)
Friday: 50 
Saturday: 35
Sunday: 86 (Week: 171; Completed: 158)

Wednesday night - better night sleep, but haven't fully recovered. Despite all that, did not get a lot done off my list. Not really sure why.  What wasn't done were cleaning tasks, reading tasks, routine tasks.

Tuesday night - crummy sleep again last night. I told people at work if it's bad again tonight that I'm calling in sick tomorrow. I slept in as late as possible and also had a really long day at work and didn't get out on time. I left a lot of things undone on my list. The financial ones I'm postponing to Saturday which is the next time I'm working on budgeting. Way under my calories today. Yay. 70 emails (yikes) and 141 feedly and 1 TED Talks.

Monday: 54 completed
Tuesday: 38 completed (15 postponed)
Wednesday: 50 items
Thursday: 22
Friday: 5
Saturday: 29
Sunday: 82 (Week: 91 complete and 188 remaining)


Monday night - started the day with 50 items, ending the day with 54 complete, but 5 incomplete.  I did not write a blog post and there's a few budget ones I've been carrying since Saturday that I wasn't able to get to tonight, either.  So how did I get to 54? I did some from later in the week. I am under my calories for the day and I hereby assert that I have not eaten anything, not one piece of cereal, not one pinch of cornbread crumbs that are not recorded. 58 unread in Feedly and 52 emails and no unwatched TED Talks.

Monday: 54 completed
Tuesday: 50 (22 + 28 repeating)
Wednesday: 26
Thursday: 11
Friday: 5
Saturday: 22
Sunday: 82 (Week: 54 complete and 196 remaining)

Sunday night (Prep) - This is becoming a workable system, which means I'm spending more time getting stuff done and less time with the administration of it. I'm also better able to prioritize on what's more important, which in most cases isn't even stuff found on this list, but instead the time I spend with my family. The change this week will be that no matter how many times I complete something in a given day, I will only check it off once. For instance, I had a task to do "25 jumping jacks, 10 pushups, 10 situps" - if I did 50/20/20, that means I checked off the item twice. So I was ending a day with more checked off than I had planned to do, but still postponing stuff to the following day. It's hard enough tracking stuff that repeats every day, but to continue to push stuff off makes it harder to assess that I'm doing the right stuff.

So, this week, I have 212 items listed. I pushed a lot of junk to Sunday that I'll ultimately push into the next week, but I tried to keep the rest of the days light - so that if I find I have extra time, I can do additional stuff from the list, but I want to reduce the amount of time spent postponing stuff. Another problem is stuff during the week in the evenings. I don't think I have anything this week, but if I've forgotten something, I'll probably just clear out that day.

Monday: 50 (20 + 30 repeating)
Tuesday: 20
Wednesday: 20
Thursday: 10
Friday: 5
Saturday: 23
Sunday: 84 (quite a few of these will definitely be postponed)