I'm not a fan of keeping up with the Joneses, but I am a fan of measuring oneself against one's own past benchmarks. Measuring against other people isn't fair, but measuring against yourself can spur growth. So So when I say it's time to keep up with the Joneses, aka my blogging schedule, I mean keeping up with past Isaac's arbitrary wellness goal of blogging at least once a week (ish). This is a wellness goal because I like writing, and am sadder when I don't do it regularly. I'd like to do it more regularly, but it still doesn't feel like the right time for that. I've got textbooks to read and essays to write. But some day, I want to focus more on this part of my life. I'm looking forward to it.
Last week was a little lighter, and so I got a day to take care of little tasks. It always feels nice doing that, like another form of self care. Kind of like cleaning up one's room, except the room is kind of inside my head, my running list of things to do. Though I have handily put it outside my head, via my todo list. Still, I have to look at it each week and sigh at how many items are on it, many of them simple and quick things that I could do easily, but just aren't important enough, against some of the bigger and longer immediate things.
Maybe I should just do a few each day, in the morning, kind of like a warm up for a test, doing some of the easy questions first, to build confidence. Sounds fun, actually.
In any case, I've been thinking about how some of these not-urgent project, like cleaning my rooms, would make a big difference in my life experience, even though any particular day they are not super important. So, today the plan is to tackle my bedroom. I think I should be able to get it pretty much entirely put away. I'm going to try setting time limits for the various parts of that task, because doing so helps me keep up a quick pace and not get hung up on little details, which is downside of my careful and thoughtful nature. It's been the most effective thing I've tried for getting my weekly review shorter, so I thought I should try it with other things.
Really, my weekly reviews used to take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours, average maybe 3 at first, then I tried to streamline it as much as I could and got down to 2.5, occasionally close to 2. Then I just decided: I'm going to only give myself an hour to do it, and whatever isn't done in that time, isn't going to get done that week. It put me in a whole different mindset, and I found myself just ignoring things I otherwise would have spent time on, thinking they were important. It's kind of like the last minute packing when you're moving: you spend the weeks leading up to it, packing things carefully, and then, the day before the move, you realize there's a huge amount left to do, and you just start throwing things in boxes. Yes, it's a bit of a pain when you're unpacking, but it's so much more time efficient, you still end up saving a bunch of time.
When you have unbounded time, it's easy to get caught up in things. When you have very limited time, priorities become much clearer, almost instantly.
I wonder if it is similar to the research on goal setting theory. Here's an interesting and practical fact for you: If you set easy goals, you put in less effort. When you set challenging (but doable) goals, it pulls out more effort from you, and you do a better job. It may also feel better, accomplishing the streach goals.
OK, enough thoughts, what's going on in my life concretely: I'm getting excited about my internship, which is fast approaching. I'm enjoying my classes, as I feel like I'm learning about useful stuff (marriage/couples/family, and crisis & trauma), we split a whole bunch of wood on the weekend, so we're all ready for fireplace season, and the garden is still producing, though it's starting to wind down.
I found a cherry tomato that looked like a face, especially once I added two dots for eyes.
I had a dream that the groundhog under our shed had babies, and some of the roof of their giant warren had collapsed, showing a swimming pool sized underground den, connected to tens of holes and tunnels throughout the yard, with cute groundhog babies, but the mother was human sized, bipedal, and had a mouth full of nightmarish long needle teeth. It was a little scary in the dream but I find my subconscious hilarious in hindsight. I guess I'm worried about the groundhog :D
OK, that's all for now, take care, and watch out for the groundhog ;-)
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