Friday 11 April 2014

Best laid schemes...

...gang aft a-gley indeed!

A week ago, I thought I would go back to time-boxing and instead of trying to plan tasks, plan time on projects (and if a task reached completion, I would, of course, tick it off the list). I thought I had 11 ½ free days up to May 4th and I guesstimated 8 hours/day of usable time and drew up a plan on how to spend the hours on different projects.

Oh dear.

Almost immediately it all went wrong.

I found out that I am back to Malawi on the 2nd May, neatly removing some of the days I thought I had. Not only that, but ‘stuff to get done before I go to Malawi’ then started to impinge on other remaining days (sorting out travel medicine seems to be taking up a ridiculous amount of time!).

Then came a couple of unexpected events, taking some more time chunks.

Then came the 8 hours a day issue. I had evidently forgotten that my first day ‘off’ after work (I work part-time) never seems to involve me having my backside in the chair ready to write/edit first thing. I am always slow to get the day started (whatever it is I have planned) for some reason. 8 hours in the day to do stuff? Er... no.

Then came a huge heap of ‘unexpected tasks’ which were either more important or more interesting to do than what I had scheduled. More slippage!

Then came that rebellious tendency I can have. I saw my day carved up into boxes and thought, nope, not doing that.

Then my head intervened with its ‘yes, I know you were just scheduling time and trying not to get swept up in a task, so that other things would get completed, but you’re only 5 pages away from editing the whole of this chapter, so why don’t you just finish it?’ and of course, I did.

It was also pouring with rain so gardening got crossed off the list.
I wasn’t well so running got crossed off the list.

In the picture below, I have my planned day on the LHS and the reality of the day on the RHS.

Let’s just try this all again shall we????

2 comments:

  1. Oh, this seems very familiar to me!
    I think that if I give myself too much structure, then I'm like a kid & it just seems too much like hard work... I've spent too much time in the past planning out exactly what to do in a day & when the reality doesn't match up with the plan I'd either have a strop or beat myself up.

    Nowadays, I write down all the stuff that I'd like to get done that day & just choose three to do. I focus on them, give myself time to mess around & then if I get more done from the list it's a bonus :)

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  2. Oh, my gosh. I can so relate to this: "Then came that rebellious tendency I can have. I saw my day carved up into boxes and thought, nope, not doing that." I hate that rebellious tendency. It is so annoying.

    I like the way you set that up with "plan" and "reality". If you didn't want to do that all the time, it would be a good way to see how you're actually spending your time - kind of a creative version of a time log. I might have to give that a try.

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