Having done all the things...
Mar. 9th, 2015 04:19 pmLast week was quite hectic, not because of any things that were urgent in particular but because there were several things that were important at once, like fixing the internet which became a blocker for everything else...
I am mostly recovered. And more importantly, I feel like I'm getting used to the _process_ of recognising being blocked, and dealing with the things. And recognising the state where I come out of crunch mode and I used to drift rudderless unsure which important-but-less-urgent thing to do next, and now am slowly learning the skills of how to pick something without being paralysed by choice, and working not under time-pressure to get _ahead_ of the firehose of things...
Otherwise, I had a good week. I managed some relaxing things. Liv and I saw "Big Hero 6". We went sofa shopping (didn't succeed yet but got a very nice folding dining table). We signed some paperwork which was overdue. I'm keeping up jogging, morning routine, etc even when stressed by things, because they're starting to feel "normal baseline, do automatically before buckling down to stressful stuff" not "agh I can't think about this when something else is urgent".
My parents are here for a couple of days. Last night we went to the pub to play pool, today my parents went for a long walk while I was at work and tonight we'll probably do something similar.
I'm mulling over the role Ingress played in my week. I think having the feeling of progress (closer to this badge, closer to the next level) was distracting but served a useful function of not letting me drift, of preventing free moments becoming me being sucked into a quagmire of some task that would consume my attention and not be easily dropped. But now I'm considering, can I solve that same program without the addictive time sink of augmented reality games? I think maybe I need to consciously schedule one NEW thing every week, even if it's tiny, as something to look forward to arranging. But that's not as easy as something which gives me convenient numbers on what to do next.
In theory HabitRPG could solve that role, but the progress feels sufficiently arbitrary I unfortunately don't really get a sense of "ooh, if I have some time I could see if I can level up again". Maybe if I reorganised my tasks so they were more consistent, and got something more specific for levelling up? But I'm not sure. Or find another hobby which I can always do without being blocked on, and yet always represents progress towards SOMETHING. Language-learning? Knitting? I think unfortunately drawing would be too open-ended...
I am mostly recovered. And more importantly, I feel like I'm getting used to the _process_ of recognising being blocked, and dealing with the things. And recognising the state where I come out of crunch mode and I used to drift rudderless unsure which important-but-less-urgent thing to do next, and now am slowly learning the skills of how to pick something without being paralysed by choice, and working not under time-pressure to get _ahead_ of the firehose of things...
Otherwise, I had a good week. I managed some relaxing things. Liv and I saw "Big Hero 6". We went sofa shopping (didn't succeed yet but got a very nice folding dining table). We signed some paperwork which was overdue. I'm keeping up jogging, morning routine, etc even when stressed by things, because they're starting to feel "normal baseline, do automatically before buckling down to stressful stuff" not "agh I can't think about this when something else is urgent".
My parents are here for a couple of days. Last night we went to the pub to play pool, today my parents went for a long walk while I was at work and tonight we'll probably do something similar.
I'm mulling over the role Ingress played in my week. I think having the feeling of progress (closer to this badge, closer to the next level) was distracting but served a useful function of not letting me drift, of preventing free moments becoming me being sucked into a quagmire of some task that would consume my attention and not be easily dropped. But now I'm considering, can I solve that same program without the addictive time sink of augmented reality games? I think maybe I need to consciously schedule one NEW thing every week, even if it's tiny, as something to look forward to arranging. But that's not as easy as something which gives me convenient numbers on what to do next.
In theory HabitRPG could solve that role, but the progress feels sufficiently arbitrary I unfortunately don't really get a sense of "ooh, if I have some time I could see if I can level up again". Maybe if I reorganised my tasks so they were more consistent, and got something more specific for levelling up? But I'm not sure. Or find another hobby which I can always do without being blocked on, and yet always represents progress towards SOMETHING. Language-learning? Knitting? I think unfortunately drawing would be too open-ended...