Back to the future part 2

Continued from part 1, in which I write about the origins of this blog in 2011.

After blogging every day in 2011 and then limping through 2012, I tried to reignite the blog in 2013 because I did enjoy blogging and interacting with the people who read it and took the time to leave comments. So I was keen to get back into blogging more regularly. I realised that daily blogging wasn’t for me so I set myself a goal to blog at least three times a week in 2013. I intended to set some regular things to blog about to make it a bit easier. For example, Monday was going to be the day I was going to write about my journey to quitting sugar, and as the year went on, to improving my diet in general. Sunday was going to be scrapbooking/memory keeping post day.

And I had this list of 100 things to do in 2013 that I was going to review at the end of each month.

I also thought it would be fun to participate in weekly blog linkups like “Wordless Wednesday”, “Thankful Thursday” and “FFS Friday” that I’d seen on various blogs around the place. I don’t recall that lasting very long either.

Later in 2013, I started a 12 of 12 project, which was to take 12 photos of your life on the 12th day of every month.

A random 12 of 12 photo from 12 August 2013

I blogged about trips away, unusual things and challenges I was doing, more scrapbook layouts and random issues like dealing with imperfection (that was a good one). I ran a semi-regular feature for a while called Find Me Friday, where I would post a photo of part of a building in Hobart that I would challenge my readers to identify. I also did a 30 days of lists challenge, which foreshadowed a much bigger project I’d take on a few years later. The blog was still alive, but it wasn’t a regular part of my life any more. And I never did those 100 things in 2013. Or in 2014. Or in 2015 . . .

You can read about where my thinking was around this time, my initial idea for the blog and then the revamped one, here, which is on Blogger, the original platform I used. I moved over to WordPress in September 2013, which is why the formatting of the early posts on here is all over the shop.

In 2016, after having read the book Do Share Inspire: The year I changed my life through TED talks by Kylie Dunn (my post here), in which she pent a year applying the ideas from some of the TED talks she had listened to over recent years through a series of 30-day activities, I decided to start my own series of 30-day challenges that I’d blog about. These included going alcohol-free for 30 days, drawing every day, doing something that scared me every day, and doing cryptic crosswords every day for 30 days.

This was around the time I renamed the blog to stepping on the cracks. As I explained in this post.

“The 30-days project” doesn’t have much of a ring to it. So thinking about some activities I did and some a-ha moments I had at a retreat a couple of weeks ago, I came up with the title “stepping on the cracks”. I realised that whenever I try to draw something, it tends to be straight lines, and that I colour within within the lines and that this art could be seen as a reflection of my personality. I once, when asked to do a doodle drawing, observed the following:

The idea was to draw a shape and split it into sections and doodle or make our mark. I noticed everyone else did round shapes – spirals, circles, ovals, abstracts. I did a triangle. Perhaps that says a lot about me – straight lines and angles. Left brain rules. It also included the words “Don’t step on the cracks” and “Stay within the lines”.

I think I was very dryly reflecting on myself with those two phrases rather than seriously instructing myself to comply with those rules. Anyway, very long story short, being straightlinesgirl is all perfectly OK and isn’t something I need to “fix” BUT there’s nothing stopping me drawing curves or swirls or colouring outside the lines or making a mess. So I think what the project is all about is being who I am, but not letting that prevent me from doing anything else – and seeing what happens when I step on the cracks and colour outside the lines.

This project kind of worked and kind of didn’t.

Some of the challenges were ideally suited to a 30-day format: 30 days of no alcohol, for example. This was because I had a clear idea in my head of what I’d be doing (or not doing in this case) over the 30 days, and my progress was easy to track. I either had 30 days free of alcohol or I didn’t.

Some of the other challenges were more vague and I didn’t have much of an idea what I needed to do over the 30 days. 30 days of clarity, for example. WTF?! I didn’t have a plan or anything to measure my progress by in those ones. And I think I took way too much on for the time I actually had to work on these things. As a result, things were very stop-start over this time and I didn’t stick with several of the challenges I had initially intended to do. So that part of the project was less successful.

After that project ground to a halt, I tried a few other things over the next year or two, including using the blog as accountability for making healthy habit changes by making commitments to a healthier lifestyle and posting weekly updates, but even that didn’t last very long. I also wrote about taking part in Care Australia’s Walk In Her Shoes challenge for a couple of years.

Walk in Her Shoes 2016

Finally, at the end of 2018, I decided to take on the 19 for 2019 challenge, which was a list of 19 things I wanted to accomplish in 2019. (Not 100, which I’d aimed for in 2013). I got the idea from Gretchen Rubin and Liz Craft’s Happier podcast, as they were doing 18 for 2018. Finally, some success! I had an achievable list of 19 things to do, of which I did 14 and I updated the blog a lot more consistently, which kept me on track with the list. I carried it over into 20 for 2020 (and now 21 for 2021) and over time have gradually expanded it to include keeping up to date on habits I want to develop and little things I want to improve.

I’m feeling comfortable with where it’s at now and I have a nice little routine for writing the posts each week and keeping track of everything I’ve done.

It’s been an interesting process to look back on where I was ten years ago and to see how, in relation to some things, not much has changed at all. I thought I’d share my favourite post from each month over the next few weeks, to commemorate the tenth anniversary, beginning with this one

• 8 January 2011: Tweetup, in which I overcome my fear of meeting people and bravely turn up to a BBQ with People From Twitter Who I Don’t Actually Know In Real Life.

Now on my blog’s tenth anniversary, I’ve been starting to wonder whether its format and title is really what it’s all about or if it needs a bit of a reboot, given the last reboot was in 2016. In particular, acknowledging that there’s nothing stopping me drawing curves or swirls or colouring outside the lines or making a mess but that, when I think about it, I don’t actually want to make that type of art.

There’s a lot going on in my head at the moment!

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20 for 2020

20 for 2020 is a continuation of 19 for 2019, which is an idea I stole from Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft’s podcast Happier (here’s the link to how Gretchen and Liz did on their 19 for 2019 lists). I think they actually started it with 18 for 2018.

I’m going to do 20 for 2020, which, I mean, how can you not? All the twos and zeros.

I haven’t made any further progress on my 19 for 2019 list since my last post, so in the end, I accomplished 14 of the 19 things I wanted to do in 2019. Three are still in progress (things 2, 6 and 16) and I will complete them, one I decided I didn’t really want to do (thing 14) because putting the systems in place to do it, rather than actually doing it, was more important, and I think I went some way to doing that. The other one (thing 10), I’m waiting on someone else so maybe I need to follow up.

Having learned from 2019, I’m going to include a mix of small things that I’ve been putting off for ages, longer term projects that I want to finish off and some new things that have just recently popped up in my life.

The first step was to look at my uncompleted 2019 things and decide if any of them need to be carried over into 2020. I’ve kept the photo project on the list (thing 16), getting my sewing machine fixed (thing 10) and completing the wellbeing program (thing 6), which will actually run again in 2020, so I will be able to dip back into that work as I need to.

I’ve also included two things that I did in 2019 and want to do again in 2020. And a whole bunch of new things.

Here’s the list

Carried over from 2019’s list

1. Complete my photo project

2. Get my sewing machine fixed

3. Complete the wellbeing course lessons from 2019 (and go back into this work over the year to pick up on things I missed last year or need to reinforce)

Repeated from 2019

4. Complete my 2019 weekly photojournal and put in place a system so that I don’t get behind with the photos again (I have kept up a lot better than I did in 2018 but I still have about 10 weeks of photos from 2019 to sort and edit)

5. Have an alcohol-free month

New for 2020

6. Complete the 21 days creative kickstart course I started at the end of 2019

7. Complete the Photoshop class I signed up for in 2019

8. Successfully complete my uni course and graduate

9. Use no camera other than my SLR with a single prime lens for 30 days and post a photo a day for the month

10. Ride my bike to work

11. Set up a mini studio at home

12. Finish the Bored and Brilliant challenge and write a blog post about it

13. Read the book Indistractable and do the activities it recommends (at work and home)

14. Develop and maintain a daily habit of reading for enjoyment

15. Redesign my study wall as a vision board

16. Have a hearing test

17. Learn to use my graphics tablet

18. Reorganise my sock drawer

19. Take a class in fermentation

20. Repot my orchid

21. Use the sprout jar

22. Commit to (and actually do) a monthly review every month

I know. There are 22 things on that list. Clearly maths isn’t my strong point or I have travelled in time to 2022.

Allow me to elaborate. The monthly review idea comes from Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year workbook, which is a lovely thing that Susannah sends out to her email list every year to help you figure out how you want your upcoming year to look. I’ve dabbled with these in the past and shoved them into a folder somewhere. This meant I never followed up what I wrote down in the early days of January and have come back to them 12 months later to find nothing I wanted for the year happened.

I couple of weeks ago I saw a post from a friend on Instagram about her starting her workbook and I commented that I never followed through with mine. She said she found the monthly reviews really good, which got me thinking about how staying more in touch with the book over the year might be key to actually getting the work done.

So I got it spiral bound at the local printers so that it looks more like a book and is a lot easier to carry round and write in than loose pages or putting it in a folder. I’ve been working my way through it over the last couple of days, pulling out some of the key themes to include as things for my 20 for 2020 list.

The monthly review is a way for me to remind myself to check in on how I’m doing throughout the year, along with my regular(ish) blog updates.

I just threw the sprout jar in as a thing at the end because it’s been sitting on a shelf looking at me forlornly (almost as forlornly as my sick orchid that is in desperate need of repotting and if anyone knows how to do this please help!) ever since I got it. I figure it’s a small thing to do, one that I have been putting off for months, and if I include it here I might have a chance of actually doing something with it. I didn’t have the heart to bump anything else off the list to make room for it, so there it is. Something I could probably do in five minutes, but it will probably take me six months to actually do.

So there we have it. My brand new list for 2020 with lots of fun and challenging things to do.

19 for 2019: a review

It’s coming up to the end of the year so it’s a good time to reflect on my 19 for 2019 list: what went well and what I didn’t quite do. I haven’t posted for a while because there hasn’t been much to say now. Every week since week 32 would have been much the same: I listened to one of the wellbeing course classes (thing 6), I added some photos to my folio (thing 2) and the sewing machine (thing 10) people still haven’t contacted me. I don’t have the big beautiful photo I imagined I would have (thing 14) and I’ve been dabbling with the photo project (thing 16) but I’m not going to get it finished.

So, let’s review what went well. I finished 14 of the 19 things I set out to do. I have three more classes of the wellbeing course so I might get there before the end of the year and I will have a folio of my favourite images of 2019 but I won’t have edited them or done anything with them.

I’m happy with completing 14 things from the list. I did some things I had been putting off for years, like getting a skin check (thing 4) and I now have a nice skin doctor who wears cool socks and I have reminders to rebook every year.

We got manicures

I finished the 31-day photo course (thing 1) in a little longer than 31 days but I did it and at the same time gained a pretty reasonable understanding of how to use Lightroom (thing 19). I had my first manicure (thing 17) and I walked on a track in kunanyi (thing 15). I actually did this twice if being parent help on Kramstable’s bushwalk counts! I walked to Moonah (thing 3) and I filled up my Bucket List journal (thing 18) with not 50 but 100 things, so I also did that thing twice.

Bucket list journal

I also had a bonus list of things I wanted to do but that didn’t make it onto the final list, so my real 19 for 2019 list was actually 30 things. I completed five of those things and I made a lot of progress on another one, so if you add those five to the 14 from the real list I actually did do 19 for 2019. I just picked the wrong 19!

I did a few other things I had wanted to do for a while too. I had a month off coffee and as a result I am no longer a regular coffee drinker. I didn’t buy anything I didn’t need to actually live for a month. I went alcohol-free for a month. And I almost completed the Bored and Brilliant challenge. I have one exercise to go. I should do it.

On top of all that, I applied and was accepted into a university course through my work, which I had no intention of doing at the start of the year; it wasn’t even on my radar, but my manager encouraged me and I got seduced by the thought of graduation in a funky gown and a funny hat at the end of next year. So I’m now a uni student for the first time in more than 20 years and while the modules are running there’s little time for anything else. (Sorry, Weekend Wisdom posts.) I did way better in the first module than I ever dreamed possible and have three more modules to go. The last one is a workplace project, which I’m starting to gather some vague ideas about in my head and which might even end up here.

So that’s 19 for 2019 almost done and dusted. Out of all the things I wanted to do, there’s only one that I think was over-ambitious and that’s thing 14, make a photo I am proud of, frame it and hang it on the wall. I imagined that some of the other things, the photo course and learning Lightroom especially, would I have led me to be able to do this. I have a few photos from this year that I really like but none that stand out and say “this is the one”.

I hadn’t given this too much thought until today when I was listening to David duChemin’s podcast, A Beautiful Anarchy. In this week’s episode, Learning to Drop, David talks about self-confidence and how if we mis-define the task we have to do, we set ourselves up to fail and, by failing, we fulfil the belief that we can’t do something. He compares it to juggling. If we think the task in learning to juggle is to juggle, we will fail and we will reinforce the belief that we can’t juggle. But the first task in learning to juggle isn’t to juggle, it’s to throw a ball and let it drop. We can do that task. Anyone can do that.

And so it is with creative work. If we identify the task as “I’m going to make a masterpiece” we are setting ourselves up to fail and to believe we can’t do it, because no one makes the masterpiece straight up. It takes a lot of throwing the ball and letting it drop before we can move onto the task of catching the ball. It takes a lot of “failures” and shitty first drafts, a lot of first lines, a lot of overexposed, underexposed, badly composed photographs that don’t go anywhere before we actually make any progress. David says

The creative life is one of failed first efforts. You’re meant to drop the ball so you can concentrate on what it feels like to throw it. Catching isn’t the point. Not yet.

So I think it was a mistake to want to make a masterpiece in a year. I should have focused on the process of creating and making and learning and experimenting and failing, not on the outcome I wanted. And, to some extent, I did that through the course and I want do to more of that in 2020. So there will be no “make a masterpiece” thing in my 20 for 2020.

Just like there will be no “read x books” in 2020 because focusing on the goal rather than the process this year meant that I basically gave up reading after I’d got to the magic number. Not what I wanted to happen when I wanted to develop a reading habit.

I’m going to use 2019 as a learning experience when I put together my 20 for 2020 list.

How about you? Did you have a list of things you wanted to achieve in 2019? How did you go? Are you going to jump on the 20 for 2020 bandwagon with me next year? Let me know in the comments.

19 for 2019: week 32 update

Week of 5 August 2019

I’m finding as I make my way through my list of 19 things I want to complete, there are fewer opportunities to make a lot of progress now that I only have five incomplete things.

This week, I contacted the sewing machine repair people (thing 10) and I am on their list of people to contact next time they’re in town, so I’m playing the waiting game now. I’ve progressed that as far as I can.

I printed some of the photos for my photo project (thing 16) to see how they’d turn out when I finally finish the project. And I made a colour coding system in Lightroom for my folio (thing 2).

I’m still working on getting a bedtime routine in place (thing 6) and am slowly making progress. Sort of. I’ve been keeping up with the weekly classes too so I’ll call that progress this week.

Status for week 32

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 14 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19)
• Things I progressed: 4 (2, 6, 10 16)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 0
• Things not started: 1 (14)

19 for 2019: week 31 update

Week of 29 July 2019

I’ve not made a lot of progress on my five remaining 19 for 2019 things.

I really should contact the sewing machine repair person (thing 10), especially as Kramstable says he’s enjoying his textile work at school that he’s started this term.

With my photo folio (thing 2), as I’m already sorting my photos each week (or thereabouts) for my 2019 photojournal so it makes sense to pick out the ones that are potential folio material at the same time. That way I only have to review the week’s photos once.

I did a bit more work on my photo project (thing 16).

Early bedtime has become a bit of a dream, I think (thing 6). I’ve been writing up my bedtimes on my whiteboard so I can see how well I’m not doing at going to bed by about 10.30. The last two weeks, I’ve never gone to bed before 10.50. I think I need some new strategies to make this happen. On the positive side, I haven’t missed a day’s walk for a long time, even if it’s just been to the bus stop at the end of the street (because I didn’t get out of bed because I was so tired from staying up too late). I’m also revisiting some of the work I did earlier in the wellbeing course to try and re-establish some of those habits.

Bonus thing No-buy July, which got extended into August because I slipped up, is going well. I haven’t bought a single book, item of clothing or new pen or signed up for any class (not even free ones). One week to go with that one (actually, four days) before I can *happy dance* buy the book I’ve been eyeing off the last couple of weeks. It’s one I’ve thought about a lot as it will complement some of the work I’ve been struggling with in the wellbeing course. So it won’t be a spur of the moment purchase. It’s one I’ve considered carefully.

Here’s a photo of a lost shopping trolley of Hobart waiting for its morning coffee.

Status for week 31

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 14 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19)
• Things I progressed: 3 (2, 6, 16)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 0
• Things not started: 2 (10, 14)

19 for 2019: week 30 update

Week of 22 July

I don’t have a lot to update from week 30. I finished the 31-day photo course (in eight months . . .) last week and I guess that felt like such a big achievement and now I’m feeling a bit lost.

Of the five uncompleted things left to do on my 19 for 2019 list, fixing my sewing machine (thing 10) is a fairly simple thing as long as I just make the call, which is always the hard part. Finishing the photo project (thing 16) will take more time but if I make regular time each week to sit down and do it, I’ll get there eventually. I did some work editing some more photos this week and I learned a couple more features of Photoshop.

Making a folio of my best work of 2019 (thing 2) is something that’s ongoing for the whole year. But I need to make a better way of reviewing my photos each week and putting any good ones in there so I don’t get behind and then have to go back through the whole year’s worth of photos to find my favourites. Something to think about and I have a couple of ideas.

Making photo I’m proud of enough to print it big and hang it on the wall (thing 14)  is something that will probably fall out of the folio, so I might not get around to doing that until the end of the year when I have a year’s worth of photos to choose from.

Cool clouds. Probably not one for the folio, but who knows?

Finally, in the wellbeing work that I’m doing (thing 6), I’m still struggling with the whole evening routine and getting enough rest thing. I’m not sure what’s going on there but I suspect it’s my brain trying to make me feel good in the moment rather than listening to what is going to actually be good for me. I wrote about it a bit in my Weekend Wisdom post. This week I listened to the week 28 class (the material is a bit behind the actual weeks of the year because we started in mid-January) and I’ll have more to say about that in my week 31 post.

For No-buy July, which isn’t a thing but I’m still doing it, I didn’t buy anything from my off-limits list this week. No books, no online courses, no free resources that end up putting me on mailing lists that send me more tempting things to buy, no stationery (even though my favourite stationery store had a 15 per cent of everything deal), no clothes (even though my favourite clothing store has had several sales going on). I’ve been ruthless in deleting emails that are out to tempt me. There is a piece of equipment I’ve been considering buying for several months and it’s come to the point where I really need to have it or I risk wasting a lot of work. I’ve done some research and asked questions and I think this is going to be the best way to fix some problems I’ve been having. So I think I can justify that. It’s not on my off-limits list so it’s all good.

Status for week 30

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 14 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19)
• Things I progressed: 2 (6, 16)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 1 (2)
• Things not started: 2 (10, 14)

19 for 2019: week 29

Week of 15 July (week 29)

I’ve had a lovely slow week this week. It’s school holidays and I had four days off work.  Wonderful! It meant I got to spend some time with Kramstable and to do some things for me as well, including finalising a post for my photoblog (I mentioned this in my Weekend Wisdom post) and taking myself to the movies.

One of my 19 for 2019 things was to get a manicure. I’d never had a manicure before this week and I’m not sure what made me want to have one. I never let my nails grow very long and I’m not a nail polish fan. But I do have a couple of friends who have really nice hands and I keep thinking it would be nice to have soft, well cared-for hands rather than chapped ones. So I put it on the list (thing 17).

Kramstable is fascinated by all things nail polish so I asked him if he wanted a manicure too. He did, so I figured it would be a good school holiday activity for us to do together this week. And we did.

I wasn’t sure what would be more difficult for the lovely nail ladies: my ancient hard-as-rock hands with years of cuticle growth, or Kramstable’s small fingers. Bethany, who was working on Kramstable’s hands, said his hands were easy and if I thought that would be hard, try doing a manicure on a three-year-old.

I mentioned to Jessica, who had the unfortunate job of working on my neglected hands, that I had never had a manicure and didn’t take very good care of my hands. She just smiled and said, that’s why you’re here. Indeed. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience and my hands felt and looked very soft afterwards. I mentioned that I had some really old cuticle oil at home and Bethany said get it out, put it by your toothbrush and use it when you brush your teeth.

Great idea! I’m going to do that as part of my evening routine (thing 6) so that next time I go back (because next time I’m going back for the ultimate hand pampering treatment) my manicure will be easier and my hands will look even better.

Quite coincidentally, I learned that that day was a strong “earth” energy day and good activities for earth energy days include “treats and luxuries” so it ended up being a perfectly appropriate day for it.

I have been doing horribly on getting to bed on time and on staying hydrated, which are my main wellbeing goals (thing 6). I can’t, hand on heart, say I made any progress on that this week.

But!

I completed the last three assignments for the photo course I started back in December (thing 1). The course was meant to take 31 days. It took eight months!

Never mind, I got there and I learned a lot and certainly know a lot more about Lightroom (thing 19) than I did when I started. I’m also working my way through a book called The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby, which I bought for my Kindle before I started taking the course and had forgotten about. It’s nearly 500 pages long and covers file organisation, which was helpful when I started before I had any clue how any of it worked, as well as having a lot of material on workflow. It has a lot of instruction about dealing with your finished images (printing, publishing and so on), which doesn’t really interest me at the moment.

I’ve flicked through it and I don’t think there’s anything more in there that I need to know to edit 90 per cent of my photos. I think what I need to do now is practise and edit lots of photos. If there’s something I need to learn how to do, I can look it up either in the book or online. There’s no point in going through it now when I don’t need to use it because I won’t remember it and will have to look it up anyway. For the purpose of this being a thing I wanted to do in 2019, I’m happy to call it done. I will never know everything there is to know about Lightroom, but I know enough for what I need. Thing complete.

I edited some photos for my photo project (thing 16) and I added this week’s photos to my 2019 folio (thing 2). And with No-buy July (take 2), I’m up to day 11.

Status for week 29

• Things completed this week: 3 (1, 17, 19)
• Things completed to date: 14 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19)
• Things I progressed: 2 (2, 16)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 1 (6)
• Things not started: 2 (10, 14)

19 for 2019: week 28 update

Week of 8 July

No-buy July, which isn’t one of my 19 things but is a 30-day challenge I want to do, lasted exactly nine days, and on the tenth day, I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be buying stuff and ordered something online. As soon as I hit “pay now” in Paypal I knew I’d stuffed up. I tried to rationalise it by telling myself it wasn’t really buying, it was pre-ordering and that I had intended to buy this product for ages and had just never got around to doing it, so it really wasn’t a purchase of a non-essential thing in July.

All very fine excuses, but not good enough. I bought something I didn’t need and so the month restarted on 11 July.

I finished two assignments in the photo course, so I now have four remaining out of the 31 assignments in the course (thing 1). I watched the last class video and I learned some new things in Lightroom for one of the assignments (thing 19).

I was losing track of the photos for my folio (thing 2), so I made a smart collection of all the photos from this year in Lightroom (there are 5900 of them) to have them all in one place and started to pull out my favourites. So far I have about 200 shortlisted. I made virtual copies of my shortlisted photos for the photo project (thing 16) and have started editing them.

I made my appointment for a manicure next week (thing 17) and I finished sticking the last of the 2018 photos in the book (thing 11). It is now safely tucked away in its archive binder and I have finished another thing!

The Bucket List Journal (thing 18) has space for you to list and plan out 100 things.

There’s a two-page spread for each of the 100 things to help you plan how you’re going to do it and to record what you did when you did it. There’s also an index section at the back to list all of the goals. That means you have to write the things in the book TWICE! I put all the 100 things in the index on Saturday but decided that it didn’t count as finishing the thing, because the things needed to be in the book proper so that I could start to make plans to do them. That was my intention when I wrote my list. So I wrote them all in. And I have a sore hand from writing so much. But I’ve finished another thing. And don’t be surprised if 20 of the things on that list make their way onto my 20 for 2020 list, if I decide to do that.

If you’re interested, this is how MiGoals, the creator of the journal, recommends to use it.

I’m failing badly at my attempts to implement a consistent evening routine (thing 6) and have been doing some of the other work from my wellbeing course around getting better rest. This course is a thing I don’t think I can ever actually fully complete. It’s designed so you can go back year after year and take what you need at the time. This is the fifth year I’ve worked with this material and so far I have never made it through to the end of the year. So my goal is to stick with it for the full year, listen to all of the lessons and I start to make a few small changes from some of the lessons. I can always go back and work through it again next year and get new things from it.

Status for week 28

• Things completed this week: 2 (11, 18)
• Things completed to date: 11 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18)
• Things I progressed: 6 (1, 2, 6, 16, 17, 19)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 0
• Things not started: 2 (10, 14)

19 for 2019: week 27 update

Week of 1 July

Hobart Waterfront, Wednesday morning

This has been another slow week for my 19 for 2019. Monday was 1 July so I decided to start this No-buy July thing. I don’t know if it’s a thing or not but if it isn’t it is now. (It is. I googled.)

When I was making my 19 for 2019 shortlist, I included a few month-long challenges I thought I’d like to do over the year. Only one of them ended up making it onto the final list of 19, which was the month with no alcohol (thing 13). There was also a month with no coffee, which I ended up doing pretty much alongside the no alcohol month, and a month of not buying anything I don’t need. This would include books, online courses, clothes, jewellery . . . anything that I don’t actually need and tend to buy on impulse or on sale or because of one of those breathless “LAST CHANCE!!!!!” emails, without considering if I really need it or am really going to read it or do it. (Spoiler: I don’t.)

So this is my challenge for July. I didn’t pick July because it rhymes with “no buy”, I just decided to do it this month.

Strategy one in this quest is to avoid shops at lunch time. Yes, that includes bookshops. The temptation there is too great.

Strategy two is to delete any emails that look like they might have tempting things or sales advertised in them. New fountain pens? Delete. Look at these beautiful new notebooks! Delete. 30 per cent off at my favourite clothes store? Delete? Buy two get one free? Delete. You mustn’t miss this opportunity for this shiny new course! Delete. LAST CHANCE!!! Delete. Funky pillow you can sleep at your desk with? Delete. All Udemy courses on sale? Delete. New . . .  Wait a minute! Funky pillow I can sleep at my desk with? Did you say sleep at my desk?!   Hold on . . . surely I need this?!

You do not.

*Makes folder of things to look at in August* *Files email*

Okay, this started out well. I managed to get through the first week pretty easily. I even went to Spiceworld to get the spices I had run out of without making a detour into my favourite clothing store next door. (Spiceworld is my downfall.) And then on Friday morning, unexpectedly in the mail arrives a loyalty voucher from my favourite bookstore as a reward for buying all those books I haven’t read over the last 12 months or so.

Oh dear!

This is a true test.

Free books!

But No-buy July!

But free isn’t actually buying, is it . . . ?

Well technically, no, but the point of No-buy July in my view is to not accumulate more stuff. It’s not about spending money. So no, I may not spend the voucher this month. Instead, I can think about all the wonderful books I might get on 1 August and choose one (or two) that I really want and that I will read.

Willow Court Barracks, New Norfolk, Sunday afternoon

In terms of my actual 19 for 2019 list, this week I’ve been focusing (imperfectly) on my evening routine (thing 6). I took some photos that might work for one of the photo course assignments (thing 1) so I’ll count that as progress, and I also watched one of the videos. I stuck one photo in my 2018 photojournal before I ran out of tape (thing 11). I bought more tape, after an exciting lunchtime trip to Spotlight where I wandered round with this look of devastated confusion on my face for ten minutes because I couldn’t find the tape. And finally, I now have a list of 100 things I might be happy to put in the Bucket List journal (thing 18).

That is all good.

Status for week 27

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 9 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15)
• Things I progressed: 4 (1, 6, 11, 18)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress:  4 (2, 16, 17, 19)
• Things not started: 2 (10, 14)

Weekend wisdom 3

A weekly review of things that came through my inbox that I found interesting and want to remember.

This week was a mix of a couple of intense days and a couple of less intense days where I was able to slow down and deal with the backlog of things I had neglected during the intense period. I even got to inbox zero at work, which was a nice feeling to go into the weekend with.

There wasn’t a lot that came through my inbox this week that really jumped out at me as something I wanted to remember and/or put into practice. The first thing I noticed was from James Clear, who wrote about the myth of multitasking in his weekly email.

I’m familiar with this concept so the article was more of a refresher than anything new. James observes that while we are capable of doing two things at the same time, such as watching TV while we’re cooking dinner or sending an email while we’re talking on the phone, it’s impossible to concentrate on two tasks at once. So what our brains do when we think we’re multitasking is actually switching very quickly back and forth between the two tasks. This uses a huge amount of energy and wastes a lot of time because of the time it takes to get back onto the previous task when you switch. And it results in lower performance.

To overcome trying to do many things at once and to enable him to focus on what’s important, James says he identifies his “anchor task” every day. This is the one priority that he has to get done that day. He says that, while he has other things he has to do during the day, the anchor task is the priority, and he plans everything else around doing that one thing.

What I like about this model is that James has a weekly schedule of these anchor tasks, which give his week some structure and allows him to know exactly what he needs to focus on that day. So, for example, on Monday he has to write an article and on Friday he has to do his weekly review. This is something I’m going to try out and see if it works for me.

Completely unrelated photo taken on my phone on the way home during the week

The second article I found interesting this week comes from Asian Efficiency, which is about checking in on how you’re going with the goals you set for yourself at the start of the year. If, indeed, you actually did that.

The article suggests if you look at how you’re tracking half-way through the year you can adjust your goals accordingly so that they remain achievable for the rest of the year. The example they give is if your goal was to do 50 book reviews and you realise you’ve only done 15 by six months, the mid-year review would be an opportunity to either adjust the goal or to amend the number of reviews you do each week to help you achieve the original goal.

The article suggests some things to look at, which include:

• changing a goal, for example, because your circumstances have changed
• removing goals you no longer want to pursue or that aren’t as important to you anymore
• looking at where you’re at with the goals you set and what else you’ll need to do to get there.

It also touches briefly on the idea of setting more frequent goals, rather than 12-month goals. For example, rather than 50 book reviews in the year you could set a quarterly goal of 12 book reviews. By setting shorter-term goals, the article says you need to make more frequent check-ins. So you’re less likely to become overwhelmed by the length of time needed to achieve the goal.

I guess most, if not all, of my goals for this year are in my 19 for 2019 list, though I didn’t write the list with “setting goals” as an objective. Some of them aren’t so much goals as nagging tasks I keep putting off. Looking over the list there’s only two that I would consider to be “goals” that I haven’t made a lot of progress on and that I want to tick off by the end of the year. And I still have six months of the year left to do them so at this stage I’m not too worried. Ask me how I feel about them again in November!