Week in Review: Tactics

Last week was a good one: As part of my tactics to increase my productivity and impact I score points based on the various ways that I use my time (always a gamer), and last week I scored the most points thus far this year (surely I will level up and gain the Triforce!) I have a spreadsheet (Google doc) and everything. It’s embarrassing.

Last week I did not miss a single day of writing, practicing Spanish, advocating politically, cooking and eating ethically, working on Flux, and blogging my progress here. That’s a good week, and I was also able to dampen the impact of my Wednesday/Thursday blues. Usually without fail, I experience intense stress/exhaustion/depression (in the non-medical sense of that word) on at least one (and sometimes both) of those days that significantly lowers my happiness and productivity. I was mindful of those dips going in, and was able to work through them with some (albeit not complete) success. I discovered some best practices (gross, sorry) and tactics like: always cook and do dishes the night before, blog before you fall asleep not when you wake up so that you can write first thing, and write on the train in and practice Spanish on the way home. If I can follow through on those practices, I should be able to keep the good times going.

However, as far as my February goals outlined here, I fell short in many cases, and so what follows is the list of goals, and my notes on where I feel short and how I’ll try to do better this week in bold:

February goals and progress report:

• Finish The Sea Concerto, one additional full length play, and 15 pages of a new full length play towards my Play a Month goal While writing every day helps, I need to clear more big blocks of time to meet these goals. I’m allocating all of Saturday to this goal.
• Finish the second chapter of the first book in my After Earth series I’m allocating the train rides home on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday night to jumpstarting this goal.
• Complete writing and Spanish practice every day–can I go a whole month without missing a single day? So far, so good!
• Stress test our current monthly budget to see if it’s feasible Lots of progress here–I’ve spent at least 10 minutes every day working on budgeting.
• Write two poems for The Book of Hours Have not yet written a poem, but I have time, and haven’t felt the tickle yet.
• Add four quotes to The Hyperlink Bible I’ve already added five quotes–way ahead on this!
  
• Write the first post of the Ethics for the Anthropocene essay series Fail. I’ll make Thursday my Ethics of Anthropocene today. Every week, I’ll do some work on this essay series on Thursday.
• Write the first post of The Common Reader essay series Fail. I’ll make Tuesday my Common Reader day. Every week, I’ll work on this essay series on Tuesday.
• Practice music at least once a week Fail. I’ll make Wednesday my music day (as above.)
• Practice juggling at least once a week Success! I’ll keep Sunday as my juggling day.
• Participate in at least one direct social justice action a month Success! I participated in the Keystone Pipeline protest.
• Jog at least once a week Fail. I’ll make Saturday my jogging day.
• Do yoga at least once a week (setting the bar nice and low!) Fail. I’ll make Monday my yoga day.
• Double the frequency of my push-ups and squat jumps Well, I did better than any week in January, but I didn’t quite double it. Hopefully this week!
• Submit plays to at least three contests/opportunities a week I will submit to one opportunity on Monday, Wednesday and Friday–let’s see if that does the trick.
• Create an action plan for my indie theatre book idea Have not stared this yet, but I have time.

So, yeah. Some progress, but a long way to go to meet these goals. Oh, and I’ve been cast in a play that opens this month, which will complicate all of this, but, publicly committing to things does seem to make them happen for me (if anyone is actually reading this), so here we go. February, Week 2, break!