Accounting for Lost Time.

I’m rather tired of starting out these blog posts with excuses. So I’m not doing that any more.

I’m hoping I’m not the only one who can see two entire weeks disappear and not be able to not be able to account for where it all went. Worse than that, I can look at all the tasks in my bullet journal and see that they’ve been sliding to the right for some while, looking for a time to happen, when all that seems to happen is that they slide to the right some more.

A Productivity Reset.

It might feel like two weeks has gone by without my having achieved a blessed thing, but I know that’s not the case.

A Bullet Journal.

It might be that my approach to the bullet journal is less than ideal. What I’ve been doing is take each day on a week’s spread and assign tasks where I think they’ll best fit.

This is an improvement over my old… I can’t call it a ‘system.’

But it fails for two reasons. Firstly because there is no allotted time for any of the tasks, they’re little more than suggestions of what I could do, if I’m not busy or distracted.

The second reason is that each task only takes up the space on the page necessary to write it with no regard to how long it’ll actually take or whether there’ll be enough time to do everything listed.

A New Approach.

A few days ago, I decided enough is enough and started checking out YouTube videos about productivity. I immediately locked on to the idea presented here by Amy Landino: calendar blocking.

I’m a fairly big fan of Google products and I’d come across Google Calendar before, only I hadn’t thought of using it this way: to make sure that there’s a particular time for everything that I plan on doing.

I’m tying this in with the app on my phone and getting notifications. This means for anywhere there isn’t white space, I’ll know exactly what I planned on doing at that time and I’ll have no excuses for not doing it.

Is There More To It Than That?

Yes!

I have to take charge of my time and value it. It’s my time and I need to be completely free to use it as I see fit, which means – as I explained to the family yesterday – that I’m going to be saying ‘no’ when asked to do things that aren’t a good fit for me.

Are they on board? They sure are!

So far, anyway… …I haven’t had to say ‘no’ yet.

Old Man News.

I’ll be starting the revision on Chapter 16 this evening. This is really the turning point for the young Hall Boy, his point of no return.

Rather than completely rewriting Chapter 14, I decided to simply recast the Colonel’s role – I’m keeping him as the Colonel for now – because of the different perspective he brings to the story.

Up Next…

Part of the fruits I expect to get from the calendar blocking technique will be assigning particular parts of the week not just to revising the novel but to blog writing. My intention is to get in front of the inevitable firefighting of issues that can crop up, such as an oil leak, an unexpected need to set up and attend an orthodontist appointment, a flat tire and so on. If I can manage that – and there’s no rational reason why I wouldn’t be able to – then I’ll be at the point where I’m writing blog posts a little ahead of time and scheduling them to post on Monday mornings so that my blog posting won’t be as erratic as it has been.

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving and, if you’re planning some motor vehicle maintenance this coming week…

That’s not my car, if you’re wondering.

Categories: Administrative, Productivity, Revision, The Old Man, Time Management, Work Update, Writing