Accidentally in Code

Tag: most important task

  • Giving Up On Goals

    Giving Up On Goals

    Post-it Monsters
    Credit: flickr / zarprey

    I’m not doing my weekly review at the moment. At first it was in part because I was ashamed to admit that I hadn’t yet unpacked my apartment (it’s done now). But also, I showed up to the coffee shop to work with my mentee and something exciting had happened to her, and she said, “I just had this feeling, when I woke up, that I should get here as soon as possible”. So she did. And she was there in time to make a great connection with someone.

    That exchange inspired me to go with my feeling of leaving the week open to see what happened. In fact, a meeting came up and Ali (my TA who is taking over) and I ended up writing a proposal for a conference on my workshop. It was good – I had a productive week.

    I’m using Health Month to track my health and fitness goals, and what I’m realizing is that I used to use my weekly plan to balance the different areas of my life. Volunteering, work, studying. At the moment, I have no different areas of my life. It’s pretty much the gym, my thesis, and hanging out.

    This is pretty nice – and probably very necessary at this stage in my masters. And it makes goal setting in that way overkill. There’s something freeing about deciding the day before what my one important thing is, and then working on that.

    I still believe in goals. I still believe in structure. But – if there is only one significant thing to work on, arbitrary goals can be a distraction. It’s actually about progress. I don’t know what I will get done on my thesis next week, but I do know what my next task will be.

    Meanwhile, I’m just going to keep ticking along, carving out my space and routine in this new place. AY has this idea called “restful acceptance” – I love it. She says, your todo list will still be there tomorrow. I just think, I can make a new list, tomorrow, if I need to. But when what I need to do is this clear, and I don’t. Why bother?

  • Eating Live Frogs

    orange eyed green tree frog
    Credit: flickr / rainforest_harley

    Reflecting on Sunday’s post on Effectiveness and Time Management, and my reluctance to eat live frogs in the morning, it’s occurred to me that:

    1. I don’t tend to have a “most important task”, because most of my tasks are fairly open ended. Each day I have something that I want to make some progress on, and normally I do. This is working OK.
    2. I don’t tend to start the something in the morning, either because it requires me being in my office, or I have other things that I want to clear out the way so I can focus on it.
    3. In general, the afternoon is my peak work time for these kind of tasks – provided the morning goes well.
    4. Whilst my most important task may be a live frog, there are other live frogs that are not necessarily the most important task.
    5. Getting better at eating live frogs first thing, may improve my self-discipline and this will flow to other areas of my life.

    To this end, I’ve made a list of my live frogs. And I plan to eat one first thing in the morning every day this week. Here they are:

    1. Exercise. I like exercise, I do, but not first thing in the morning because I worry it means I don’t start work until too late and it makes me hungry all day. Also, I think my metabolically-optimum time for working out is mid afternoon (ideally around 4ish). But I can’t always work to that so I should just get up and go swimming instead. Normally, though, I don’t – I did this morning though, and I feel better for it.
    2. Going outside. The thing that stops me starting on my “most important task” earlier is often that I have to psych myself up to go outside because it’s sooooo cold. That’s the difference between fall and winter for me, in the fall I can make it into my office by 10am easily. In the winter, I’m doing well to make it in by lunchtime.
    3. Grocery shopping. I hate the grocery store, and this also involves going outside, so double whammy. Thing is, the quickest time to make the trip is in the morning because the store is less busy.
    4. Dealing with people. There’s a reason why, where possible, I schedule all my meetings for afternoons. I don’t really like talking to people in the morning, so I avoid them.
    5. Laundry and other household chores. We have a washing machine in our apartment (rare in Canada) so I don’t get to moan about this too much, but I hate hanging it up and putting it away when it’s dry.

    Looking at this list, it strikes me that none of these are “work” tasks. But they are things than can potentially take me away from my afternoon productive time, if I let them. Or cause problems if they don’t get dealt with. It annoys my boyfriend that I can’t have a conversation in the morning, for example, and it’s a pain to have no clean clothes or have to stop work early to clean the apartment because people are coming over.

    Your list will be different, of course. Join me in the Live Frog Challenge? I’ll check back in with you on Friday to let you know how I’m doing.