Looking at my ideas from a few days ago, some were a lot more specific than others. And it’s no surprise that those are the ones I’ve started to act on.
One thing I didn’t include in that post, but which is an important step, is brushing up how I manage tasks. I am a big fan of the Getting Things Done approach, where one of the key principles of managing tasks without getting overwhelmed is to get things recorded in a system that you trust, that reminds you of things you need to do at a time when it’s sensible to do them.
I’ve had a great system through my work emails and calendar (so good that I often stuck personal commitments in there too!). But that’s another thing I will need to transition into a new system.
I like google keep notes for one-off tasks, simple but allows me to organise tasks into neat buckets and tick them off as I go, setting reminders that I can link into my calendar. It had got a bit cluttered but I’ve cleared out old tasks and set up new notes for my main projects. For daily habits I use an app called habit now, which has lots of useful categories and collects stats which can be motivating (or not, but that’s another story!).
I think these are good places to start, but I will see how I get on. One thing I miss already is not being able to flag which tasks are high priority, and which tasks are I don’t want to forget but give myself permission to not act on. There’s a fine line between being stressed because I have too many things on the to do list and stressed because I’m not capturing ideas I might, at some point, want to come back to.
Anyway, using these tools for now, I can set out some specific actions to take forward my plans.
- 10 minutes of yoga a day before I go to bed.
- Finding a daily moment of connection with each family member.
- Make a list of friends I’d like to make sure I contact and putting reminders in place so I don’t let this slide. Making sure I include colleagues from my old job on this list.
- Come up with some plans for what I’d like to do with local friends and try to do at least one of these each week.
- Scheduling blog posts every 3 days with reminders in my calendar.
- Spending 30 minutes 3x per week looking for useful connections on my social media feeds and reaching out.
- Keeping my new task management systems up to date by scheduling a weekly review to check my progress and clear out tasks that aren’t relevant any more.
And the classic coaching check, how confident do I feel that I’ll be able stick to this?
About an 8. Lots of these things are new and I know how easily life can derail new things, particularly when there are lots of things changing at once.
How could I get to a 10? This would require getting these actions into systems that will remind me, e.g. a prompt to do my yoga that pops up about 30 mins before my regular bedtime.
Excuse me, I have some changes I need to implement.
Leave a Reply