Goals 2019 -- August Recap

This month, K and I were trying to get things done through journaling.

Did it work?  Did we get things done?  Here's what I learned about myself:

1. I have very little control over my own time during the work day (and right now the work day is extending to encompass longer and longer hours).  I might have all the good intentions about what I hope to accomplish, but when it comes right down to it, it's not really up to me.  I'm putting out fires, and that's about it.

It seems that this book might be better suited for someone who is either not employed, is self-employed, or otherwise just has more free time which requires planning.

[Aside: I just listened to an episode of Hidden Brain called You 2.0: Tunnel Vision, all about scarcity and the changes that go on in our brains when we are faced with a shortage of something.  The obvious scarce item is money, which is how the show opens, but there is also a segment on time scarcity, which I am totally feeling right now!]

2. Despite not being able to control my own time, I am more interested in journaling if I get to use a collection of fun-colored pens to do it!

3. I realized how much different my weekday schedule is from my weekend schedule (more on this next month).  I could really only commit to journaling in the morning if I kept the journal in the car, so it was there for me to work on in the morning on the way to work.  But that meant that I almost never journaled on the weekend, because getting up and going to the car wasn't one of the first things I did in the morning.  On weekends, by the time I remembered about the journal, it was either too late in the day for it to be meaningful or I was elbows-deep in a project that I didn't want to interrupt.  Accordingly, most weekend days were journal-free.  That is perhaps a bit counter-productive when referring back to #1, since weekends are when I have the most available time!

4. Each day, I looked back at the previous day's goals to see how I did.  Overall, I have about 1/3 more green check marks than red ones.  Seems like something good.  But what I noticed was that I started setting very small goals that I knew I could accomplish, because I wanted to get that green check mark!  But, as K pointed out, isn't that kind of the point?  The whole goal is to make you feel productive, and if that happens by breaking tasks down into smaller and smaller sections so that you can make some progress, it's a winner!

I like that interpretation.  It might be as much justification as interpretation, but I'm going with it!