21 for 2021: another thing done

Week 20/2021: Week of 17 May 2021

What did I want to do better this week?

Afternoon exercise. 

So, how did that go then?

. . . . . . . . .

21 for 2021 update

This week I did some more work on my resume (thing 18). I think I’m happy with it now, as I don’t have any need for it in job applications right now, so I’m calling it done. I’ve made six-monthly appointments with myself to review it as part of a regular catchup with myself to check in on how I’m going with all things work. How super organised is that?!

This is an idea I got from Katherine at People Flourishing, who has been a wonderful help to me in the past with my resume and applying for jobs.

I also did some work on my websites and blogs (thing 13). I’m trying to make them more consistent in terms of style and with the stories I tell about myself. 

I didn’t start a new chapter of the Change Journal but I’m still working on Habits (Chapter 7), Clarity (Chapter 8) and Pitch Yourself (Chapter 9).

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. 

I cooked Alice’s “Blend and Snap” Celery Soup (page 418) this week. Any recipe that talks about Elle Woods is already a winner in my book and this proved to be the case in practice.

One thing I love about this is that there’s no pre-cooking prep needed. You just cut up celery, leek and some herbs, blend the lot with some stock and put it on to cook. Blending everything with my stick blender was the most intensive part of this cook. Otherwise it was all pretty easy and I had time to make a side dish of zucchini fritters. (This was easier than it sounds. It was grated zucchini mixed with eggs, salt, pepper and nutmeg, and fried.)

Celery soup garnish

I think what made this soup was the garnish, which is made up of the chopped celery heart, cranberries and pine nuts. Without it, the soup would have been nice but not super tasty (perhaps not having had the celery salt the recipe called for contributed to this), but the addition of this crunchy, tart extra, really lifted it and put it firmly on the “will make again” list.

It tasted better than it looked

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I’ve been reading my friend’s book so I can give it back to her. The funny thing about this is that she asked if she could have it back for a few days if I hadn’t finished it so she could use it in something she was writing. I said I’d take it in for her because I was dipping in and out of it and still had a long way to go, so that she could get what she needed from it and then give it back so I could finish it. Our catchup got postponed, and later in the week she messaged me to tell me she had just received a late birthday present from a family member, which was. . . .  the same book. So there is now no rush at all for me to finish it now. 
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. One hour on Sunday afternoon. I’ve almost finished the first one I wanted to get done this year. I asked Kramstable to quality check it for me. He picked up a couple of errors so I’ll fix them next week and hopefully this one will be done and I can move onto the next one.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum but we had to spend most of the time going through some government forms and I didn’t get a chance to ask her any more questions. Not to worry, I still have a lot of notes to write up. One of the things I’m doing in my spare time is an online course about research skills, which is primarily about field interviews, but I’m finding a lot of helpful advice in there about getting information in other contexts such as meetings and even chats with my mum. One of the things they strongly recommend is to take time after your interview and document as much as you can in the words of the person you just spoke to. I haven’t been doing this either with Mum or at work, so I’m going to build that in to any future meetings. 
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I worked on Module 6. This module is about obtaining information from people, so it fits really well with the material in the research course, including things like active listening and observing the person you’re talking to.

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 18
• Things completed to date: 3 (1, 18, 20)
• Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13, 17)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 6 (6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

One of this week’s photos from my Hobart Street Corners project

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

Over the last two weeks, I have been working through the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad. This is difficult, confronting work but it’s necessary. I’m learning a lot and I’m facing a lot of things that I need to address within myself. 

What was the best thing this week?

I skipped my yoga class this week and went to Kramstable’s debate.I don’t usually go because yoga is on at the same time but this week I wanted to see him speak. When we got there, we found that the opposing team had forfeited so there was going to be no debate. The adjudicator said that he was happy to step in as the negative team and debate the kids single handedly, then a couple of parents said they’d like to debate as well, so it was on. 

It was interesting to see how much more relaxed the kids were with their speeches when there was no “competition” pressure. Thanks to one of the parents, I now know there is less chance of getting a blood clot from the covid vaccination than there is of getting attacked by a shark on a plane. I never quite found out if this was an airborne plane or one that had crashed into the sea. 

I got the casting vote as to which team had won, so I called it for the kids and everyone was happy. 

An afternoon walk

What I’m reading this week

• Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
• gulp! The seven day crash course to master fear and break through any challenge by Gabriella Goddard
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): 5
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 5):
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 6
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 6
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 3
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 4

21 for 2021: week 19 review

Week 19/2021: week of 10 May 2021

What did I want to do better this week?

More than one afternoon’s exercise in the week.

So, how did that go then?

I did two days . . .

I also did the City to Casino seven km walk on Sunday, and then walked back to my sister’s house afterwards, for a total of almost 13 km for the day, so I’m sure that counts as well.

Chilly start to the City to Casino on Sunday

21 for 2021 update

I didn’t work on a new chapter of the Change Journal (thing 4) this week. I’m working on the habits chapter (chapter 7), and pitch yourself (chapter 9) in conjunction with my resume review (thing 18). Really, this should just be a couple of hours work, a final check and hit publish. But I always seem to take so long to get to the final stage that I feel happy with on things like this.

Same goes for the behind the scenes work on my website (thing 13). It is taking far too long! 

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. This week I chose onion and the dish was ‘The Any Kind of Onion’ Tarte Tatin (page 286). Let me begin by saying I had no idea what a tarte tatin is. I’de seen people make them on Masterchef but I didn’t really pay that much attention so I had no clue. Apparently it’s more of a dessert, but Alice says, “if you think of it like an open-faced pasty or upside-down vegetable tart, it starts to make a lot more sense”. Okay. (But why not just make a pie?)

The main thing I would note about this recipe is that it uses a lot more sugar than I would normally use in a dinner dish, and I have to be careful with this, which I forget sometimes.

As I did with the mushroom pie a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make a second dish from the book to go with the tart. I chose Salt and Vinegar Kale Chips (page 360) and, scoff all you want, I like kale. I also like quinoa and I like avocado as well. I just don’t sip lattes. Whatever. Haters gonna hate. I like kale. Especially when its coated in olive oil, vinegar, salt and chilli flakes, and baked.

The problem with this was that the kale had to be cooked in a 140 degree oven and the tarte/upside down pie was already cooking at 200 degrees. Round one of kale chips = completely burnt. I ate them all anyway. They were very crunchy.

Just a bit burnt

Alice says that people complain that the kale chips can lose their crispiness and go soggy within a day. Leftovers? Who in their right mind would leave these left over? They are so good. I’m counting down the days to next time there’s kale in the fridge.

Back to the pie. I mean tarte. I cooked it in my controversial (don’t ask) Le Creuset skillet, which can go into the oven, and I’ll admit to having been a bit anxious about it cooking for 60 minutes when at 30 minutes the pastry already looked pretty well done. But I stuck to the recipe and it didn’t burn and it came out looking nothing like the picture in the book. Not a resounding success but not the overwhelming disaster I expected and it didn’t taste too bad either.

Looks odd, tasted good

I’m sure there are others who would do this recipe a lot more justice than I did. I might have to try it again to see if I can do it better!

I think this what the kale chips were supposed to look like

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. One of the things on the list is to read books I have borrowed from other people and give them back. I’m reading one of these books.
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I spent two hours on one of these videos on Sunday and it’s almost finished.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday and talked a bit about what it was like to be a young mum in a small country town in the 1970s. 
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I started module 6. 

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 2 (1, 20)
• Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13, 17, 18)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 6 (6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Murray Street, Thursday morning

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

I had two training courses this week, which was a nice change from work. I went to the 26TEN Plain English Writing workshop on Tuesday, which was a good overview of Plain English, most of which I was familiar with but it was great to review what I knew and pick up on things I hadn’t quite grasped. And I learned a couple of new tricks for communicating more effectively at work.

These workshops are excellent and 26TEN runs them across the state at various times during the year at no cost, so if this is something you’re interested in, it’s worth doing. 

The other workshop I did was Aboriginal Cultural Awareness presented by the government’s Aboriginal Employment Unit. This was interesting and built on understanding that I had already been developing on issues relating to Aboriginal people in Tasmania. One exercise in particular was really intense and clearly showed difficulties Aboriginal people can face in accessing basic government services. 

The challenge from this is to build what I learned into my work. I have a lot to learn. 

What do I want to do better next week?

That afternoon exercise thing . . .

What I’m reading

• On Writing by Stephen King
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
• gulp! The seven day crash course to master fear and break through any challenge by Gabriella Goddard

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 3): 3
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 3): 3
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 4
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

21 for 2021: week 17 update

Week 17/2021: week of 26 April 2021

I  had a lovely day out with my sister and her friend at Mt Field National Park on Saturday, which was great because I could forget all about my to-do list and concentrate on  not rolling my injured ankle clambering over large rocks on the Tarn Shelf. Did I succeed? No, I did not. But I can still walk, so I don’t think I did too much damage.

I still have a tonne of photos to sort through, so here are just a couple of them.

21 for 2021 update

This week in the Change Journal I worked on chapter 5, Digital Detox.

I don’t know that I learned that much from the exercise other than that on a bad day, if I was on social media and email and watching TV as much as I was that day every day of the year, I’d spend the equivalent of 43 days a year doing that.

43 days!!!!

Actually, this is a bit misleading, because I don’t normally watch TV and I have been lately because I watch Masterchef with Kramstable, and I check the Twitter feed about the show on my phone at the same time, so a lot of the time I counted as being on social media was double counted as TV time as well. If I hadn’t been watching TV, I might not have been on the phone either.

 The idea of the chapter is to track your usage over the first four days of the week, to track your non-usage over the last three days and then work out how much time you’d save over a year by not going on the phone. I found that difficult, to actually track the times I thought about picking up my phone but didn’t do it, especially as I was out and away from the journal for most of the time so didn’t have any way to record near-misses. I sort of get what it was trying to do but it didn’t work for me. 

I know what my main triggers for wasting time on the phone are. They are being in between tasks, not being sure what I should be doing or not really having anything to do. I know that on days I have a lot to do and I just sit down and do it, I spend a lot less time on the phone. 

So I found this chapter more of a reinforcement of what I already knew, rather than something new.

Also, I completed 66 days of the habit of doing the pre-work routine (thing 20), which is part of chapter 7, so that thing is done. I’m also working through the journalling chapter (chapter 24).

I did some more work on my resume (thing 18)

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable.

 This week’s dish was Carefree Cabbage Curry (page 456). I’m not a huge fan of cabbage. In fact, I reckon it’s up there with Brussels sprouts and we already know what I think of them. However, Alice says, “Often, when cabbage gets braised, it is shredded, grated or chopped in some way where you lose the beauty of its folds and undulations. Here, the rich golden marinade and equally shimmering gravy only serves to emphasise the grandeur of this brilliant Brassica.”

Wow! What a description. It’s a love letter to cabbage, right? Writing like that is almost enough to turn the most ardent cabbage hater. 

Almost.

For this dish, you cut cabbage into wedges, marinate it and then cook it in what is a very tasty curry sauce. (Note to self: you have run out of Kashmiri chilli.) It’s actually nice.

Marinating cabbage. It’s a thing.

There, I said it. There is a cabbage dish I liked.

I think having the cabbage as such a big chunk bulks it up a bit so you don’t feel like you’re missing out by not having any meat in it. I can imagine I’d make this again. 

I even had nigella seeds already

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I didn’t do this on Satirday as I was out but I did read a bit from one of the books that’s on the list during the week.
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I worked on this for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to my mum this week, but I got her to identify some people in some old photos
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I finished lesson 3 of Module 5.

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 1 (20)
• Things completed to date: 2 (1, 20)
• Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 17, 18)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 7 (6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 11 November 2011: eleven, which is about how I spent 11/11/11. Sick on the couch at home, it turned out.

I took a photo every hour that day for the 11Eleven project, which seems to have now disappeared. I don’t know if the book ever happened but I’m pretty sure none of my photos would have made it in!

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

I went to a webinar on age discrimination in the workplace, which I found very interesting. One of the panelists asked why we have this constant fixation on chronological age, and said that focusing on age to categorise older workers is deficient and limiting. I found Kay Patterson, the Age Discrimination Commissioner, a real inspiration at age 76. This is all going to be relevant to my work in the coming months so it was a useful and thought provoking session for me.

I was also interested to see Hobart Council’s Crowther Reinterpretation Project in Franklin Square. This project provides local artists with the opportunity to respond to the statue of William Crowther, a public figure in mid-19th century Hobart.

The first project is called “Truth Telling” by Allan Mansell, and it considers Crowther’s treatment of Aboriginal man William Lanne (King Billy) after Lanne’s death, including decapitating his body.

There will be four temporary artworks involving the stature over the rest of 2021. While I was aware of Aboriginal people’s bodies having been desecrated in the name of white people’s “science”, I didn’t know about William Lanne’s particular story, and I think this project is a good opportunity to, as the project description says, “acknowledge, question, provoke discussion or increase awareness about the story of Crowther and Lanne”. These are important stories that we need to learn about.

What was the best thing about this week?

The Tarn Shelf walk.

What I’m reading this week

• On Writing by Stephen King
• Dæmon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling by Philip Pullman
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 4): 4
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 4 work days): 4
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

21 for 2021: week 16

Week 16/2021: week of 19 April

This week I started Chapter 4 of the Change Journal, which is called the Circle Trick. This is a technique by Sigur∂ur Ármannsson,  which Tim Jaudszims, the Change Journal author, says he has modified a bit. It asks you to list your tasks chronologically in the order you have to do them if they have specific times they have to be done by, otherwise you can add them however you want. There’s a list of symbols you can use to tag that the tasks, a bit like the symbols that people use in bullet journals.

I didn’t know who Sigur∂ur is so I googled him. He is an Icelandic designer who seems to like fonts a lot. His website is font.is and a quick search of his blog archive finds a post from February 2009, where he talks about his way of recording tasks in a notebook to fit the way he uses the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. He’d been using this system for years, he says, and decided it needed a name, so he called it Circle. Just out of interest, Ryder Carroll, the inventor of the Bullet Journal system, says he was working on his system in 2007 and launched it in 2013.

I’m not going to compare the two systems. They use different symbols to denote to-dos, degrees of importance, and various stages of completion or cancellation (and bullet journalling goes way (way) beyond a simple to-do list). But looking at it from the simplest perspective, I don’t suppose it matters what symbols you use. You might start out with one set and change them as you get familiar with the system, how it works and what you actually need to symbolise. There are no rules. 

I tried it for a week, as a slightly different system to the one I currently use.

I say my “system”. That is, perhaps, being a bit generous.

What I like about Circle is that Sigur∂ur uses it in conjunction with a to-do app, so he might write something on the list, but he might later decide to move it out of the notebook into the electronic system. That item gets marked as completed in his notebook so that he can only see things he has to still do there. Of course, this relies on you actually checking your to-do app.

I check mine regularly.

 Ahem.

 Starting out, I felt a bit sceptical of the system as it appears in the Change Journal but, having seen Sigur∂ur’s original post and putting a couple of things back that Tim had removed, I think it makes more sense to me now.

The idea of putting things in chronological order put me off but I don’t think I read it properly the first time because they only need to be listed chronologically if they have to be done at a specific time. Nevertheless, on Day 1, I tried to allocate times to the tasks I wanted to do. I had a seven hour work day and I listed eight tasks, some of which relied on other people getting back to me, one of which was a quick phone call, and others that were not particularly well-defined, breaking all the rules about specifying an actual task.

At the end of the day, I had completed four of my eight tasks, worked on three of them and not done one at all. Actually I had completed five. One of them was to watch some training videos but I didn’t say how much I wanted to do, so I watched two videos and got up to the next written exercise and called it done.

 The photo gives you an idea. This was the only day I allocated times to the tasks. I’d generally do that in my calendar if I needed to get something done at a certain time rather than on the to-do list.

Not my actual tasks

I liked seeing very clearly what I’d done, with a bunch of filled-in circles, and where I’d overcommitted myself with a bunch of open circles. I think this is a technique I could keep working with, or at least incorporate some of the ideas into the way I plan my day. I think it’s worth persevering with.

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. If you read last week’s post, you’ll know that I ordered a new external SSD to replace my apparently failing internal hard disk drive. It arrived on Tuesday and I set it up to be my computer’s main hard drive. Everything seems to be working fine and I’ve had no issues with it beachballing or freezing or being super slow. I really should have done this months ago instead of complaining about it.
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I spent an hour on Sunday afternoon working on this. It’s coming together well, I think.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my Mum on Thursday as normal. She’d got held up at the doctor’s so we didn’t get as much time as we normally do.
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I worked on lesson 2 of module 5.

It’s so tiny!

Yay!

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 1 (1)
• Things I progressed: 6 (4, 5, 8, 9, 17, 20)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 9 (2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Monday sunset

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 27 October 2011: The big 300, which is about reaching the 300-post milestone and still wondering what my blog is about.

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

This week I went to two event organised by the City of Hobart’s Bush Adventures team. On Thursday I went to a session about playpus conservation in Hobart’s waterways and learned many things about the platypus. For example, they can climb up waterfalls and their bills are nothing like ducks’ bills. I also learned that the plural of platypus can never be platypi, as that is a Latin plural and the word “platypus” has its origins in Greek words for “flat foot”.

On Saturday, I went on a “fungi foray” with a small group led by mycologist Richard Robinson. And that is the first thing I learned, that a microbiologist who studies fungi is a mycologist. This was a lovely two-hour exploration of some of the fungi growing on the foothills of kunanyi. I think I mainly learned how much I don’t know about fungi—and how many of them there are all around us that we never notice.

I also saw some wicked spider webs.

What did I do for the Earth this week?

A key message from one of the speakers at the platypus session was that it is not enough to enjoy the environment, We have to actively take care of it and protect it. This is something to keep in mind for next weekend’s state government election.

Our beautiful Mountain, kunanyi

What I’m reading this week

• On Writing by Stephen King
• Dæmon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling by Philip Pullman

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): 5
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 5): 3
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 6
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 2
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

21 for 2021: week 10

Week 10/2021: week of 8 March 2021

21 for 2021 update

I feel Ike I haven’t really progressed much this week in terms of my 21 things. I didn’t do any cooking so I didn’t make a new vegetable recipe (thing 2) and I didn’t start a new chapter in the Change Journal (thing 4). I had planned to do some work on my resume (thing 18) and link that with the chapter on strengths but it didn’t happen. I’m still working through the habits chapter, including the pre-work routine (thing 20).

We went away for the weekend so I didn’t have my regular time to work on the undone things (thing 5), the vegetable garden (thing 6) or Kramstable’s videos (thing 8).

I did, however, find myself in one of the unexplored areas I wanted to photograph (thing 14). I had an hour on Tuesday night to wander around a suburb I don’t usually go to. I didn’t have my camera, so I just took my phone and made some ideas for a future photo walk in the area.

Adventures in suburbia

I took the film from my SLR to get developed (thing 16) and they scanned images came back on Friday afternoon. The pictures look like they were made on a trip to Great Lake in May 2012. The photos that I made last week to use up the film didn’t turn out at all, so I need to talk to the camera shop about what might have happened to them; whether it was the film being so old or whether there might be something wrong with the camera. I hope it’s the fomer!

Regular projects

There  are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to  doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story.I went to see my mum and we talked about how she met my dad. 
• Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I commented very constructively on some photos people had posted in the class Facebook group, and on my adventures into unexplored territory I made some photos for the lesson 5 exercises but I’m not sure how close to the mark they were.
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I finished Module 3. 

21 for 2021 week 10 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 1 (1)
• Things I progressed: 7 (4, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 20)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 6 (2, 5, 6, 8, 13, 18)
• Things not started: 7 (3, 7, 10, 12, 15, 19, 21)

What else did I achieve this week?

This week the Ten Days on the Island festival has been running across Tasmania and I particularly wanted to see Julie Gough’s exhibition, Fugitive History, at the Ross Town Hall. This was part of the “If These Halls Could Talk” series of events that were held in community halls across the state.

We decided to make a weekend of it and go to Launceston for the night.

Ross Town Hall

The works were deeply moving, showing us “the often-unrecorded atrocities perpetrated against Tasmanian Aboriginal people by the colonists of Van Diemen’s Land”.

Part of Julie Gough’s work

It made me think a lot more about some of the things I’ve been learning and reading about recently, and I’m glad we went.

It was raining by the time we got to Launceston, so we spent the afternoon at the QV Museum & Art Gallery looking at some of the new exhibits. Last time I was there in October, there was a lot being prepared and not a lot to see. This time there was a lot to look at.

Nest, by Alastair Mooney, looks at “the resilience and beauty of Tasmania’s native birdlife in the face of human consumption and destruction”.

Nest

Lost Landscapes, by Anne Zahalka, gives new life to old museum dioramas, reflecting the way these displays contain “powerful messages about the way institutions privilege particular narratives about the environment”.

Skin showcases Garry Greenwood’s leather sculptural works that include musical instruments and masks.

Skin

And finally, Herself, which celebrates the range and richness of art by women in QVMAG’s collection. It includes works from female-identifying artists from 1820 to 2020, including Julie Gough, whose work we saw earlier in the day. So that was a nice way to round off the day.

Sunday morning photo walk

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 5 June 2011, where I got to hang out with the wonderful gardening guru, Peter Cundall, who is now 93 years old.

Tread lightly.

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

This week, I signed up for the Understanding Dementia MOOC, which is run by the University of Tasmania’s Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre. Through this, I learned that dementia is not a disease itself. Rather it is a condition that is caused by a variety of diseases, the most common of which is Alzheimer’s disease. It is a terminal condition that involves the progressive loss of mental and, ultimately, physical functions, which results from the ongoing and irreversible death of brain cells.

I’m finding it very interesting and am learning a lot.

What was the best thing about this week?

Going away for the weekend.

What I’m reading this week

• The Summer Island Festival by Rachel Burton
• The INTP: Personality, Careers, Relationships and the Quest for Truth and Meaning by A.J. Drenth
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Walking back to the hotel after dinner

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 4): 4
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 4 work days): 4
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 6

20 for 2020: week 48

Week of 23 November 2020

My 20 for 2020 list.

What did I want to do better this week?
I wanted to stop looking at my phone in moments between activities and do some kind of movement instead.

So, how did that go then?
Probably not so well. The phone’s in reach. I just mindlessly grab it and look at it. Perhaps the thing I need to do first is to find out exactly how many times I pick it up during a day to look at it. That’s the task for this week then.

I’ve become a lot more aware of scrolling Instagram during my work day and I don’t do that any more because I have to log it in Habitica and it takes health away from my cute little avatar.

On to 20 for 2020
The only thing I did this week was work on my 50 in 50 photo project (thing 9). I’m now a month into this project, where I only have my 50mm lens on my camera and I take a photo every day. I think I’d actually have completed it if I’d decided to stick to the original task, which was to do it for 30 days. But 50 days makes way more sense with the 50 mm lens, so the task continues.

50 in 50: Day 29

I’m a bit behind in editing the photos because I’ve been working through my Open House Hobart photos at the same time and updating my blog with those too. But I finished the last post on the weekend, so they are done now and I can go back to focusing on the 50mm photos.

Sunday was monthly review day (thing 22), which I did at the coffee shop.

Not this coffee shop

What did I achieve this week?
My regular check in: I stayed up to date with my Hobart Street Corners project and I have a bit to do to catch up with my weekly photo journal.

I finished my NaNoWriMo goal of 15,000 words on Monday. Okay, it wasn’t anywhere near the full 50,000 words so I’m not a NaNoWriMo “winner” but I did sit down and write the foundations for a writing project that I want to work on, and that’s what I wanted to achieve in November, so I’m a winner in that sense.

I had a big success at work, with a project I’d been working on for about 18 months finally being launched into the big wide world after much to-ing and fro-ing between various people who have more control over what happens to these things than I do. I was really happy about this because a lot of my work in recent years hasn’t really gone anywhere. So to have something I ‘d worked closely on get the tick from the highest level was a good feeling. This week also saw the end of the Budget Estimates process, so all of that work is done and dusted and I can go back to normal, whatever that looks like.

I’m not really sure what this will be as my job had to be reshuffled a bit to let me focus on the Estimates work, and I don’t have to go back to the role I used to have. So this will be a time of new things and possibly new work. Which seems a bit odd to be doing this close to the end of the year.

What didn’t go so well?
I went to the doctor about recurring pain in my heel, which had turned into a big lump on Tuesday night that got me worried. It was an amusing visit in the end, which included him promising me that it wasn’t a tumour. It’s actually an Achilles issue, caused, he said, by over-use. Basically I walk too much!

In a nutshell, he said I need to reduce my activity to let it heal and that it could take anywhere from six months to six years to come right. It reminded me of a tennis elbow issues I had a couple of years ago that eventually came right by itself after about 18 months. I guess this will be the same.

A function at Government House on Friday was a nice way to end a very busy week

My physio had a slightly different take on it on Friday, and he said it all stems from the area of my body that’s getting overloaded and causing all my other issues, which has resulted in this as well. So we keep working on that and I have to wear better shoes. No thongs, no bare feet and basically nothing that isn’t a fully supportive running shoe.

It might be time for a new pair of shoes.

Summary for the week

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 15 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21)
• Things I progressed: 2 (9, 22)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 4 (7, 11, 13, 17)
• Things not started: 1 (19)
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 7
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I went for a walk in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 4

20 for 2020: week 40

Week 40: Week of 28 September

My 20 for 2020 list.

What did I want to do better this week?
Learn about different ways to get stuff done because planning and scheduling isn’t working for me.

So, how did that go then?
I’ve been vascillating between thinking I am incredibly unmotivated and lazy because I can’t make myself plan out my days and stick to the plan, and exploring the possibility that maybe this is not the best way for me to get things done and that rather than beat myself up about it I should be finding ways that work better for me.

I won’t go into a lot of detail but, as part of my research for my uni project (thing 8), I fell into a big Myers Briggs Type rabbit hole, which I know is a tool that has its fans and its critics. I’ve always found it interesting and have found that the description of the type I think I am has been pretty accurate and explained a lot about they way I think and behave. Over the years I felt that maybe I had changed my preferences significantly because of the way I’ve been working and the work environments I’ve found myself in. Doing some of the “unofficial” online tests (I know!) returned results that suggested the same thing and one of my workmates said that a type profile that was the direct opposite of my type on two of the dimensions sounded exactly like me. I was horrified!

Looking into this further, and learning how the four preferences interact with each other beyond the basic type descriptor, I’ve concluded that my basic preferences on the four dimensions are still the same as they were when I first did the profile many years ago but I’ve adapted the way I work to fit the places I’ve worked so much so that people think I’m like that persona. It makes sense to me that I’m actually really not and that my real preferences have been suppressed. So I’ve developed the other side, if you like, to enable me to do the things I’ve needed to do, but it’s not really the way I prefer to work.

Don’t get me started. Oh right, I already have.

Long story short, using that particular tool, I believe that my real preference, and where I feel most fit, is not in a particularly structured world and that’s why I’m struggling to impose structure on myself and to follow my own plans. Another part of the same tool also explains my tendency to get lost in rabbit holes as often as I do and to start things I never finish. It’s why I’ll come up with the ideas but you’ll never see me putting them into action. That’s someone else’s job. Apparently there are people who are good at that and enjoy it. Who knew.

In my rabbit hole last week, I found a resource about productivity for my particular type (or what I believe to be my type), which made so much sense to me and proposed another way of getting things does that doesn’t involve a daily schedule. So that’s going to be my focus over the next few weeks: putting that approach into practice and seeing if it gets me better results.

On to 20 for 2020
This week was still all about uni (thing 8) and, true to type, I haven’t actually looked at the project plan I made at the beginning of the project, despite the wonderfully detailed, colour coded timeline I made. (I know what you’re thinking after I said I wasn’t the scheduling type. I love making plans and schedules. I could do that all day. Just don’t ask me to follow them.)

From memory, I’m about a week behind where I expected to be. That’s in part because I didn’t allow enough time to actually sign people up, so the consultation stage has taken longer than I expected it to. This week I talked to eight people about the project, four of whom I didn’t know at all, which was extremely challenging for me as an introvert who would have been happy for everyone to respond in writing. Amusing, right? An introvert talking to introverts about being introverted. What was I thinking?

It was a challenging week, exhausting for me just being around people so much, but also very rewarding because I think I got a depth on some of the issues that I don’t  know I would have been able to fully explore if those people had responded in writing. And that’s exactly what they said to me. We had those one-on-one in-depth conversations that introverts are supposed to love. Challenging, but it’s certainly expanded my thinking on the project. How I’m going to fit it into 3000 words is anyone’s guess.

I have two weeks to do it in and I will hand it in.

What did I achieve this week?
My regular check in: I’m keeping up to date with my weekly photo journal and my street corners project. That’s the bare minimum I want to keep going while I finish my project, and it also makes sure I give myself a break from the intensity of the project by doing something creative for a while.

A couple of images from this week’s Hobart Street Corners.

I’ve also been doing a bit better at getting to bed on time. I reactivated my Habitica app, which basically gamifies your habits. I’m not much of a gamer but using an app where my character loses strength and health if I make an undesired choice or don’t tick off a daily habit is a little bit more motivating than checking a task off a to-do list in an app that I always forget to look at. And I have a bear cub! How cute is that!

I guess I should also acknowledge the work that I did on my project as an achievement, especially talking to people I don’t know. It was a big step out of my comfort zone and I am really proud of myself for having done it.

What didn’t go so well?
I feel like this was a bit of a reset week for me so I’m not going to be too hard on myself for things not going well.

What do I want to do better next week?
Start to use the new system and see how it works.

Summary for the week

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 12 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20)
• Things I progressed: 1 (8)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (7, 11, 13, 17, 22)
• Things not started: 4 (9, 12, 19, 21)
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I went for a walk in the afternoon (Goal = 5): 6
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5): 5

20 for 2020: week 31

Week 31: Week of 27 July

My 20 for 2020 list.

I feel like this week went by incredibly quickly and I didn’t get a lot done.

I went out to take photos of birds. I came back with photos of the moon.

I got my mark for my uni assignment (thing 8) that I had struggled and tortured myself over and was overwhelmed by my result. In a good way. I really didn’t think I’d nailed it at all but the lecturer obviously did. Now I only have one more unit to complete and the course is finished.

This week’s contribution to #losttrolleysofhobart

I was at work on Thursday and the sewing machine people called me to organise a time to fix my machine at my place (thing 2). “How about this afternoon?” he asked. Even with my magical superpowers of workplace flexibility, that wasn’t quite enough notice, so it will have to wait until next week.

I didn’t do any work on my Photoshop course (thing 7) but I did catch up on the backlog of 2020 photos in my Hobart Street Corners project. It’s a project I started in 2018 to document the streets of Hobart as they were at one moment in time on my phone. It’s gone a bit quiet this year because I haven’t been out taking photos much since the March lockdown and even now I’m only in town one day a week. But I’m doing what I can. I guess if I run out of photos this year though, there is a backlog of 2018 and 2019 photos to work through. (And a potential thing for the 21 for 2021 list . . .)

I spent a bit of time refining some of my systems to try and be more organised, which is related to the Indistractable work (thing 13). A big part of this was going through my emails and getting them out of my inbox. An empty inbox is a beautiful thing. The challenge will be to keep it like that.

Something shiny and new to photograph

Sunday was the closest to the last Sunday of July so I went to the coffee shop to do my monthly Unravel Your Year review (thing 22). I got a bit stuck on a couple of the questions so I’ll have to think about them a bit more. Something for next week as I plan my study program.

Summary for the week

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 11 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20)
• Things I progressed: 3 (2, 13, 22)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 4 (7, 8, 11, 17)
• Things not started: 4 (9, 12, 19, 21)
• Days I stuck to my 15 minutes creative habit: 6
• Days I read a book: 7
• Days I did yoga stretches: 1
• Days I was in bed by 10.30: 1

What do I want to do better next week?

• Go to bed on time.

20 for 2020: week 29

Week of 13 July

My 20 for 2020 list.

After a week off that I really needed, it was back to work this week. Kramstable was still on school holidays. I’m glad that he’s able to do his own thing for most of the time now, so there is no longer this crazy juggle of work hours, annual leave, vacation care and other family members every 10 weeks or so to make sure he is suitably supervised in the holidays. Sometimes it used to feel like if we weren’t in school holidays, I was planning for the next set. There are some things I don’t miss about having a younger child, and that is right up there near the top of the list!

I had a lovely day out with Kramstable, my mother and Slabs on Wednesday. This included us taking him to an activity that my mother had been doing with him in school holidays since he was about six, but she needs someone to drive there now as she doesn’t drive any more.

Kramstable also needed some help with filming some scenes in the city for a project he’s working on. As I stood in the middle of a public street watching his camera and tripod while he made the shots of himself he needed, it occurred to me that first, unlike me, he had no reservations whatsoever about setting up his gear in public and paid no attention to the people wandering past looking at him. Second, I felt a whole lot less self-conscious being with him than I do when I try and set up my camera on a tripod in the street. I think there’s a lesson or two in there somewhere.

My uni program (thing 8) sent through the learning guide for the next module (the last one!) and I printed it off so I can flick through it before the module starts. For the final module, we have to do a workplace project that applies some of the things we’ve learned throughout the course to an actual work situation, so I’ve started to give that some thought and to talk to a few people about what I might do.

Sunday morning coffee shop writing

 

I proved yet again to myself that I am perfectly capable of focusing on work for long periods if I set things up properly and know exactly what I need to be doing. On Friday, after spending most of the week catching up on what was going on and following up all the mundane things that seem to form the bulk of my job at the moment, I turned off my email and teams chat, set my status as “do not disturb”, put on an out of office message that said I was busy, and sat down for four hours to work on the project I had wanted to finish before I went on leave. It was brilliant! I got so much done and ended up with it being at the point where I was actually comfortable to send it to other people for their input.

This is how I work best. This is how I get things done, and it feels so satisfying to have done this work. My next step is to figure out how to bring more of this type of experience into my work day and try to minimise the time I spend in “reactive mode”. This is a work in progress and I’m going to keep tweaking and refining what I do to find a system that works.

On Wednesday, I went to the garden centre to get a new pot for my sadly neglected indoor plant. While I was at the counter, I asked the guy what I needed to do to repot my orchid (thing 20). Well, I asked him after a couple of attempts at trying to speak to him while he was checking out my other items and ignoring me while he spoke to the customer at the other check out about golf. It turns out they didn’t have what I needed anyway so I have no problem with not going back there to get it. If they aren’t interested in helping me because golf is more important to them, I’m not interested in giving them my business. I went to another garden centre on Saturday, got what I needed and repotted the orchid. Thing done.

I spent some time on the weekend sorting and editing photos from the 2019 Open House Hobart weekend that was held in November. I had been posting my photos on my (other) blog, fell a bit behind and never really caught up. Now I’m up to date. Eight months late, but it’s done. (Check them out here. You know you want to!!)

Esmond Dorney House, one of the fabulous buildings open on the 2019 Open House weekend

It felt good working on my photos again and I really want to be doing this every day (and getting stuck into thing 7, the Photoshop class). Finding a consistent time every day that I can do it is what’s proving challenging at the moment. But hey, four days a week is better than three days last week, is better than no days!

Summary for the week

• Things completed this week: 1 (20)
• Things completed to date: 11 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20)
• Things I progressed: 1 (8)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (7, 11, 13, 17, 22)
• Things not started: 5 (2, 9, 12, 19, 21)
• Days I stuck to my 15 minutes creative habit: 4
• Days I read a book: 6
• Days I did yoga stretches: 4
• Days I was in bed by 10.30: None. Most days I’ve been close to 10.30 but I’m doing that thing where I’m quietly packing up later and later and edging my bedtime closer and closer to 11.00, a bit like the dog gradually edging itself off its mat closer and closer to the fire so no one notices until it’s taking up the entire floor space and not a single part of it is on the mat.

20 for 2020: week 11

Week of 9 March

My 20 for 2020 list.

Monday was a public holiday (yay) so I let myself sleep in a bit (which is code for lying in bed and thinking about how great it feels not to wake up slightly hungover because I am into week two of 30 days without alcohol (thing 5)) before I went for a walk and worked on my photo project (thing 1).

I found some funghi in the compost heap

I actually finished three 15-minute photo editing blocks on Monday. I got this app called Forest, which is meant to stop you doing stuff on your phone when you’re supposed to be working. You plant a tree and set the timer for how long you want to work, and if you leave the app to do something else on your phone, the tree dies. Who wants to be responsible for killing a tree? Over time, you build a up a forest and the more work you do, the cooler trees you can unlock. Of course it doesn’t stop you doing other stuff on your computer than what you’re supposed to be working on, but it does discourage you from doing stuff on your phone, which can be a pretty big distraction. And who wants to kill a tree!

I think there’s another feature on there where you can join up with friends and you can set it so if you go onto your phone while you’re supposed to be working you kill your friends’ trees as well. How’s that for accountability?!

I’d heard of this app before but never tried it and decided to do it as I was flicking through chapter 18 of Indistractable (thing 13), which is “hack back your phone”. In this chapter, Nir encourages you to get rid of apps you don’t use that clutter up your screen, and to reconsider what you have on your phone that distracts you. Nir uses the examples of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in the book, which he says he took off his phone and now only accesses on his computer so he can still stay in touch with people and watch videos, but isn’t tempted to get out his phone and start scrolling when he gets bored. Nir shares a photo of his phone’s home screen, which has Forest on it, so I decided to give it a try. I’ve only killed one tree so far and that was because I left the app without thinking about it. Ooops.

Sad little plant. Not the one I killed in Forest

As well as removing distracting apps, I’ve also heard of people who remove email from their phones and only look at it at fixed times on their computer to avoid the distraction. I actually like to have it on my phone because if I get a few spare moments, I can go in there and delete any emails I know I don’t want to read, so I have fewer to deal with when I do go on my computer.

Another part of this work is to move things off your front screen that distract you so that you only see apps that you actually need. The idea is if you put Instagram into a folder and put that three or four screens deep, it will take you more effort to get to it and you’ll be less likely to go on it because it isn’t right in front of you. At least it forces you to make a choice to get to it instead of having it right in front of you to tempt you. That’s the theory. I don’t find it makes much of a difference to me. I still find it! The only way I would really stay away from Instagram would be if I deleted it altogether and I’m not going to do that. If I want to stay off it I’ll plant a tree!

The final part of this chapter talks about turning off notifications that distract you, which is something I have been doing for a while, and I have very few notifications on my phone now. And if I really don’t want to be disturbed, the Do Not Disturb feature makes sure I don’t get any notifications at all.

If I’d had “get the gazillion tests that my optometrist keeps insisting I have” as one of my things, I would have ticked that off the list this week too.

Waiting for tests at the optometrist

I worked on my uni personal development plan (thing 8) early in the week as a way of avoiding doing work on my assignment, which is due in two weeks but then I spent several hours over the weekend working on it to makeup that time. It’s going okay at this stage. I have a lot more to do though.

Saturday afternoon

I stuck some more of my 2019 photo collages into my journal (thing 4) and even stuck in the tab stickers to mark the months. I have 12 more collages to stick in and this will be done. For my wellbeing course (thing 3) I listened to this month’s bonus webinar about moods and moon phases, which I found really interesting.

Summary for the week

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 5 (6, 10, 15, 16, 18)
• Things I progressed: 7 (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 14)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 3 (7, 11, 22)
• Things not started: 7 (2, 9, 12, 17, 19, 20, 21)
• Days I stuck to my 15 minutes creative habit this week: 7
• Days I scheduled (and did) 50 or 25 minute blocks of time to work on my projects:  None
• Days I read on the bus on the way to work (or another time for at least 15 minutes): 7