Things I did today

Here's my schedule for the first week. I colored the event the next day, reflecting if I did the activity I set to do (blue) or if I didn't do it (red). It looks to me that I can get myself to work, the gym, and keep social engagements, but left on my own devices, I'm not progressing in my hobbies or my exam goal. Tuesday evening I spent talking with a friend from Colorado, which I think is a good use of my time as I've not spoken to her for a month or so, but that could have been pushed off to another day. Wednesday, I spent time with Julie catching up before we went to dinner, then after dinner we went to a wine bar. I also neglected to put in my schedule an entry for spending time writing and researching for this blog, which I stole from Exam studying, reading and playing piano. I know part of the issue is the seemingly difficult task of studying for an entire hour, so I'll cut back. Perhaps if I schedule them in half hour segments, it will get me to want to

I worked from home today, but didn't get to the gym because people started requesting ad-hoc things to do straight away when I was going to head out for lunch, then figured that others would be coming back from lunch to ask for me to do other things afterward, and I wanted to get my actual job done as well. I just couldn't get enough time. We didn't get a lot of snow - just 2.5 inches, but my neighbors enjoyed it and built a snowman. I'll be doing my gym exercises at home, between now and dinner - then I'm heading out for a board game night with some friends. Tomorrow is supposed to warm up, with a high of 55. That'll get me back on track. Timeboxing isn't going well - or maybe it is, and it's showing me that I'm attempting too many things, or that I have too many other distractions going on. Tomorrow, I'll be able to reflect on the week. Right now, I have to start thinking about making dinner!

I don't know why everyone runs to get milk and bread when a storm hits. At least for a snowstorm, if the power goes out, your milk won't sour, but even during hurricanes, people will clear the milk cooler. What are you people going to do? Start chugging it when the power goes out? Do you soak bread in it? Why bread and milk? I happened to go to Harris Teeter this afternoon to buy just milk and bread - specifically oat milk (because I was out of oat milk, and I wanted some with tomorrow's coffee) and a bread roll from the bakery to go with my soup. Schools are already closed for Friday. We've had an inch of snow so far, and are forecasted to get another inch. Most people will work from home tomorrow. Previously, the office used to award people for working from home if they could with comp time, and not penalize people who didn't work from home when there was inclement weather. Now that everyone in the office has a laptop, when the schools are closed, we aren'

Chapter 10, Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes It's often best to focus on what you can control instead of things you can't. You can't control the stock market - but you can control how much you contribute to your retirement accounts. You can't control what other drivers do, but you can be a better defensive driver. All of the actions that you can control and improve are all centered on you. It's up to you to protect the time for you to be the best you can be. Time will fly by regardless of how you use it - make sure that you're using it to the best of your ability. That's not to say that you must only work, but that you have to be mindful about how much work you can get done that is of good quality. Or, how much relaxation time you need well before you get to burnout. The author recounts his difficulty sleeping, even when he creates his schedule to include enough hours to devote to it. If he wasn't able to get to sleep at a particular time, he w

It's really awkward to do a glute bridge in the gym, even when there is a smaller, less occupied Abs and Stretching area in its own room. But I did the glute bridge anyway, yesterday, and foot elevated single leg bridge today! I didn't do the step up exercise today - just stepping on a box and back off -  because there was no box in the gym to do so, and I didn't want to step on one of the benches where people sit or lay their head even though the gym provides cleaner and paper towels to wipe down machines and benches. I figured going up 36 steps with some groceries to my apartment tonight was good enough. I certainly feel good soreness in my legs after the two days of new exercises. I'm looking forward to more and to reading a few parts of the Strong Curves book again to make sure I'm doing things right and not missing anything. Tomorrow I'll be going to dinner with a friend and will take the day off of exercising. Thursday and Friday I'll do another ro

I was suggested a productivity app recently after writing about procrastination. I gave it a go, but I don't think it is right for me. I wanted a few-frills application that allowed me to easily add habits and put in projects and tasks related to projects within a to-do app/calendar interface. Instead, I felt like it heavily suggested its own ideas, wanted me to pay for premium content, consistently would clog the feed with things the application's PMs wanted to push instead of things I wanted to focus on. After two weeks of working with it, I finally uninstalled it. I know it works for a lot of people - my friend uses it every day to much success. It's a highly rated app.  Sadly, it just didn't work for me. I found it more annoying than helpful Perhaps my friend uses the pro/premium version, which gets a lot of fluff out of the way. Or perhaps she uses many of the programs that they suggest, and uses something else for custom projects. Regardless, I'm back to u

Chapter 9, Turn Your Values Into Time This chapter is all about knowing what you do with all of your time, and setting up appropriate limits for what you can and will do in a day. Eyal suggests that just having a to-do list without setting times for the tasks will only end in frustration as things get pushed from one day to the next. He suggests instead of what we're going to do, write down why we are choosing to do the task - which would stem from our values. I know I failed at cleaning the guest room until I had a strong why - which was 'my parents are showing up in a month and I don't want to have to rush around cleaning before they arrive.' They won't be here for another month, but it was enough of a push to get it done already, and even in enough time to not just tidy the room, but actually be mindful about what I want to put where. I've tried timeboxing several times, and they always seem to fail early on. My guess is that I overbook what I'm exp