This is a bit past my vacation, but I still haven’t written one for that last week, so I’ll count this one. My spouse asked me why I don’t just skip a week, or write one long post. I think it partially has to do with habit maintenance, partly it’s an enjoyable ritual, partly it’s fun to pretend I have a ‘streak’ that I’m continuing, even if just in the loosest sense.
Perhaps most important to me though is identity. Identity is a core part of habit formation and behavior in general that often gets neglected, because it is nuanced and hard to talk about. I suspect it is also less well understood scientifically. But I definitely get the sense from the literature that it is one of, if not the most, important drivers of action, and thus has the potential to be one of the most powerful drivers of good behavior, if used well. I like the identity of ‘writer.’ It feels good to have. Even though my attention has been monolithically focused on my teaching, I liked to at least have one pinky holding my place in that identity, for when I eventually do have more time.
I think I already talked about being sick for most of my trip to Fairfield. I took a test and it wasn’t Covid, so I’m not sure what it was. The wife thinks it was just my body collapsing from exhaustion because I’d been pushing it so hard for so long. That seems like a reasonable hypothesis. Or at least part of what was going on.
When I got home, I managed to have some fun, and do some enjoyable work. Got my office looking clean again, though we’ll see how long that lasts. It seems like having a clean space is all about having a place for everything to do, but I have so many “process” items, things where I need to do something about them, rather than just put them back after I’m done with them. I need a bin for that, but then the important things get lost in the bin, since I’m so busy I don’t have time for most of them, so I need a second bin of important items, that I actually need to do, but even that gets over crowded, so I need a third, even smaller bin, for the things that are actually “up on deck” to do now, the most important and/or pressing. And maybe sub-categories by topic or… what does the Getting Things Done guy call them… “Contexts” just to spread them out into enough sensical buckets that I can get a sense of all the things in that category with a glance.
OK! I’m running out of lunch time, so I think this post is done. I have some interesting news and musings, hopefully I’ll remember to share them in my next post. I believe this is what you would call a “teaser” ;D
-I Out
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