2012 daytimer process

The planner pad is the best daytimer I've seen for ensuring progress on goals and projects.  I'm not using the daytimer in the way that the planner pad people recommend though.  My focus is more of a goal-oriented focus. 

The biggest problem that people usually have with goals is that they fall off their radar some time through the year.  It's hard to keep our goals in mind on a daily basis.  Having a good daytimer that doesn't let you fall off the wagon is a big help. 

At the top of the planner is 14-15 lines (which the planner calls categories).  I use them as days.  10 of the lines are used for tracking goal-oriented activities that I want to do every day throughout that week.  When I go back to work in a couple of weeks, there's space then as well for 4-5 lines of work-oriented goals I will have - the primary one will be being a good manager and all that entails.  I'll know more about how to attack that once I start in the role and see what kind of mess I'm dealing with. 

In the first column (Monday), I list the outcome I want to reach or daily activity.  Here's what they are for next week:

• 30 day shred daily
• Tax accounting done (Monday's activity is recording gains / losses on shares)
• Decluttering (Monday's activity is posting office chairs on freecycle)
• Writing
• Workout (eg. Monday is 3-4 sets of arms)
• Fitbit (Monday is to reach 10,000+ steps and stay within calorie limits - there's about 5 different metrics I can play around with hitting targets for)
• Fun (eg. reading, going out, kids, movies etc.)
• Renovation - eg. a week of painting and putting together the master bathroom
• Deep clean on house (Monday is bathroom - gotta get ready for that painting!)

There's a lot of focus on there on fitness and that's because my #1 goal this year is to get back in shape and not let myself get derailed like I have in the past.  Work is important, yes.  But some day the work will be gone and I don't want to be left with 20-30 extra pounds and a lonely life because I forgot to put myself, my family and friends - and my health first.

Under the daily things to do is other things that aren't time-oriented that I want to get done that day that have nothing to do with the above goals.  eg. errands and weekly type of things and one-offs.  And over on the side are about 20 lines for misc. things that I don't want to forget to do but are sort of like "someday / maybe" items in GTD.  I go through that to pick out things to do for the daily list as well as top of the head things.  But I don't work from this catch-all area.

Below that is a small section of 10 lines that I've made into a grid for my daily cleaning list - the goal being to touch each room once a day (also a vitamin reminder).  I tried going without a daily list for awhile and I'm just not at that stage yet to do without it.  Maybe I never will be - or not for another 7 years or so when the kids and pets are gone.  I'd rather have the mess and have them here with me anyway.

How other people spend their time

This is sort of a fun little graphic to waste several minutes (or an hour!) playing around with selecting different criteria to see how the average person spends their time:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/31/business/20080801-metrics-graphic.html

From the survey:
A person, an average, spends 24 minutes a day preparing meals. Other top household activities include interior cleaning (22 minutes), lawn care (11 minutes) and laundry (10 minutes).

Er... women spend 2 hours and 11 minutes on these things above apparently while men spend 1 hour and 19 minutes.  My guess is that I spend at least an hour a day on cooking alone - but then again, I like cooking.  Having said that, it's not something I spend as much time on when I'm working since I consolidate it all to the weekends, just like the cleaning.

Here's a neat post on how to get ahead:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/ouch_a_years_worth_of_occasion_1.html

And a consumer price index calculator that's kind of fun to play around with to see what that car you bought in the '80's would cost you comparatively today:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Also an interesting paper on goal intentions - how you're much more likely to get done what you want to do if you set a time to actually do it:
http://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/constructs/implementation_intentions/goal_intent_attain.pdf

A couple of nifty sites

Accomplish lets you set goals for the year - and track them.  I set up about 30 goals myself - some of which are really projects rather than goals, but that's okay.  Here's the goods on it:
http://lifehacker.com/5863496/accomplsh-makes-setting-goals-simple-and-slightly-social?tag=productivity

750 words is along the lines of Julia Cameron's The Artists Way, where you write 3 "morning pages" every day.  Here's their site:
https://750words.com/

Here's a couple of really good articles - on starting and finishing:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/get_your_goals_back_on_track.html
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/how_to_become_a_great_finisher.html

And one on When Healthy Food Makes you Hungry - I know!  What's up with that anyway?

This is fascinating: Identifying and Battling Temptation
On page 8 of the study paper, the researchers described the effect of menu choices (healthy or unhealthy) and layout of the menu.  What would people choose if everything was jumbled up in one big menu OR if the healthy and unhealthy choices were separated?  Apparently they eat healthier when they're on separate lists.
This made me think about the ramifications of this on a to-do list system and makes it logical for a person to not put their fun and mindless activities (like websurfing or tv) or sort of unnecessary and not so fulfilling tasks on the same list as your priorities.  No, duh.  But it's nice to see research backing that up.

Another plug here for fitbit.com and loseit.com - after a couple of days of using this fitbit gizmo, I have 1000% faith in my ability to stick to my weight loss goals for the year.  It's incredibly easy to use, self-updating, HIGHLY motivational and cheaper than a month of weight watchers meetings.  I think the reason it is so motivational is because it relies heavily on the "to-go" concept in Halvorsen's article on finishing above.   Basically, every day you start fresh and try to reach activity thresholds for the day which is balanced against your food intake.  Exercise more and you get to eat more - woohoo!  It's incredibly addictive though. ;-)

Fitbit !

I bought a fitbit to track my activity levels and it just came in.  It's so cute!

Here's the page about it on Amazon:  Fitbit

I also set up the android app Loseit (calorie tracker) to interact with the fitbit since my beloved noom wasn't one of the choices.  :-(  Yay though!  Loseit has a bar code scanner so you can just scan your foods in which is strangely entertaining.

Off to walk the dog and see how many steps I can rack up yet today.  Too bad I didn't get it this morning since I was up and down and all around the house doing laundry and tackling the last bastion of clutter in the storage room.

Here's what I racked up in 4 hours of use from 5:20-9:20 p.m.  The activity score was so low because it was just for part of the day of course.

To be honest, another major factor that contributed to a fairly high activity level was that my son got a Sirius satellite system and thanks to the 80's channel, I've been "Dancing With Myself" to Billy Idol and dancing with the little kid to "You Spin Me 'Round."  ;-)

11431 steps taken today

114 % of goal of 10000

15 floors climbed today

150 % of goal of 10

• You have climbed: The Statue of Liberty

5.87 miles traveled today

117 % of goal of 5.00

1914 calories burned

88 % of goal of 2184

691 active score 

69 % of goal of 1000 

Wiseman's 59 Seconds - Motivation

59 Seconds is a really good book and a fun read.  It's basically a scientific look at self-help topics - what really works, what doesn't.  Wiseman covers it all - from parenting to happiness, weight loss to dating and relationships.

Here's my notes on the chapter on motivation:

On daydreaming (as related to weight loss) - you'll have better results by not having positive fantasies about how great you'll do but by being negative and seeing the pitfalls.  Apparently being a negative Nelly led to 26 pounds more weight loss over a year than the positive visualization people.

The best tactics for succeeding with your goals are: 

1. make a step-by-step plan (with sub-goals etc. that are concrete, measurable and time-based)
2. tell other people about your goals
3. think about the positives of achieving the goal - like buying new clothes!
4. have rewards that don't conflict with the goal - eg. don't have a special meal out when you've lost 5 pounds, go buy yourself some flowers or a new pair of jeans instead
5. record your progress in writing

Use the Zeigarnik effect - "the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete"

Use doublethink:  Visualize the process of seeing yourself doing the things that will allow you to succeed with your goals as well as seeing yourself succeeding.  Be optimistic about getting to your goal but realistic about all the problems you'll face.  Focus on your #1 & #2 benefits to getting what you want - then focus on the barriers.

Dieting and drinking:  Women should eat normally, then slow down 1/2 way through the meal; men should eat slower all the way through.  Use smaller plates and thin, tall glasses.  Move the easy to overeat food out of sight.  People eat more when distracted.  People using large spoons and bowls take a lot more food.  People who keep a daily food record lose twice as much as those who don't.  Make yourself exercise by thinking about how much you'll regret not doing it.  Eating out of small-portion "diet packs" can make you eat more.

Another interesting read:  25 famous thinkers and their inspiring daily rituals. 

Articles I enjoyed

The exercise effect - pump up your mood, not just your muscles

Well, there you go - I'm an active procrastinator (sometimes) and quite happy with it:
Rethinking Procrastination: Positive Effects of “Active” Procrastination Behavior on Attitudes and Performance

Mark of the INTJ rational - I'm more wishy washy than this, but it's a great article.

Willpower:  It's in Your Head - one of the authors is Carol Dweck (loved her book Mindset) - I didn't totally buy that whole glucose theory that Baumeister put out in his recent book on willpower.  Not saying it's wrong, but it seems very incomplete.  I've always thought it's sort of like a muscle that grows when you use it - and thus change your concept of yourself from a weak person that can't resist anything to someone who is in control of themselves.  Tell yourself enough times that you don't have the willpower to stick to something, and (shocking!) you won't be able to stick to anything.  This is why it's so important to really notice all the things you do right and not beat yourself up (too much) for what you fail to do.  

Distracted?  It's time to hit the reset button - "Starting the day with a to-do list is important, but if it’s overly ambitious you will put yourself in a state of anticipatory anxiety, Dr. Pillay says. That makes it hard for the brain — which doesn’t like uncertainty — to concentrate. “Choosing three or four things as your priority for the day allows your brain to settle down and focus,” he says. Look at what is realistically possible and be specific with yourself about what you can and cannot do that day."   No arguments here on that.

Questionable research practices in psychology - which hopefully doesn't negate the studies above.  ;-)

The totally obvious:  Impatience makes you bad with money - no really?  Say it isn't so.

Tops on my "to read ASAP" (as I patiently wait for it to come available at the library):  Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.  From the blurb:  "Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble."  Yeah, my intuition isn't that trustworthy.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is another one I'm looking forward to reading.

Why has this never occurred to me?

Because I was so very excited at the thought of using my NEW!  IMPROVED! daytimer, I drew up a facsimile of the thing (one week) in my notebook for this week. 

Sometimes people resist following a daily plan just because they feel that it's too rigid or that they have to do everything on the list.  I know I certainly have resisted doing things on a to-do list because of that.  But the thought occurred to me today that I could have something on the list to do today (eg. burn old bank documents) - but it doesn't mean that I have to actually finish doing it today.  I mean, I certainly could finish it, but the main thing is that I get started and make some progress. 

Needless to say I got quite a bit done today with just this one little distinction.  I guess I've always thought of a daily to-do list as something that I had to do everything on it or finish everything off that I started.  I had given up the thought of finishing everything on a daily to-do list years ago, since that rarely happens anyway.  But today I finished "touching" everything on mine, and only carried forward two items, which I think is pretty great. 

I strongly suspect that they'll get finished tomorrow.