#ROW80 Round 4 Goals

I feel like all I’ve been doing for the last month is spinning my wheels, constantly behind and trying to catch up, without a lot of success.  This is…not a good thing.  I get All The Things done because I have a carefully balanced system of spinning plates.  When new elements are introduced, that balance is disrupted and I get…um, not nice.  I tend to bite. Being behind on things stresses me out.  Having lots of new elements foisted on me that are out of my control stresses me out.  Having extra work dumped on me because of other peoples’ ineptitude really stresses me out.  Given that I’m dealing with all of these things at the Evil Day Job and have been for a while, the stress and anxiety has been building like a pressure cooker.  I despised group projects in school–my teachers always stuck me with the slackers and idiots.  Like I was going to trust my grade to THEM?  Screw that.  I was getting an A.  I still despise them as a grown up.  Doing things by committee takes forever, it’s inefficient, and leads to all kinds of problems.  Yeah, yeah, I need to be sporting a t-shirt that proclaims Does Not Play Well With Others.  It cracks my mother up that my job is as a project coordinator (really, I’m great at it as long as I’m allowed to play God–which is the norm…just not for our primary project right now).  Anyway, the last few weeks have not been awesome.

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I’ve been on a crusade the last two weeks to find some kind of Get Things Done/Project Management app/software where I can lay everything in, set dates, get reminders, snooze anything that’s not relevant yet, and have a record of completed tasks at the end (because it would make compiling my annual review SO much easier).  I’ve tried Asana, Producteev, Azendoo, and have finally come back to Todoist, which I’ve used in the past but now has more robust features than it did baack then.  I found an IFTTT recipe that’ll add a line to a spreadsheet for each completed task, giving me that list of what I did.  I can email a task directly to Todoist and have it added to my list, which will be great because I lose things in Outlook all the time.  I just have to learn the tagging system for all of it.  My boss is about to be out of town for the rest of the week, so I’m taking the opportunity to screen my calls at work, get the new system set up, and TAKE BACK CONTROL OF MY LIFE.  Which brings me to my goals for this round.

  1. Get Todoist set up to manage my work life.  This reduces my stress, makes me less likely to miss something or drop some of those spinning plates, and puts me in a frame of mind where I am able to waste less brain power on this kind of thing.  That leaves more for writing.
  2. Write at least 20 days out of 30.  Oldie but goodie.
  3. Write and release a Meet Cute Romance.  I’ve got  a new one plotted out, I just need to buckle down and write it.
  4. Do the 31 Day Purge.  I’m not concerned with getting it all done in 31 consecutive days, but I’d love to have my house seriously purged of excess crap by the end of the year.
  5. Do yoga at least 5 days out of 7.  I’m working my way through a 30 Day Yoga Challenge now, and I’m just…not good at working out on weekends.  But I am enjoying doing just a little bit of yoga a day–15-20 minutes, especially after work, while supper is cooking.
  6. Get my class updated for spring.  I don’t even know WHICH class I’m teaching yet (my department head hasn’t told me), but almost all of them need updating to go along with new textbooks.  This is a monstrous pain in the butt, as it means re-recording almost all my lectures.  Ugh.  I’m so over wanting to do any of this.  So…that is, unfortunately, what I will be doing over Christmas holidays.

There are some other things I’d like to do, but this is all I’m committing to.  Because I’m splitting my writing between multiple projects, other than the Meet Cute, I don’t anticipate finishing any of them before the end of the year.  But we’ll see.  I’m off to taekwondo to work off some of this frustration.

3 thoughts on “#ROW80 Round 4 Goals

  1. As soon as I’m done writing this I’m looking up todoist, I think I at could be the answer I also am seeking. Sorry work is so frustrating lately. But your goals are awesome!

  2. I’m something of an addict when it comes to efficiency, productivity, and tracking services. I’ve tried a bazillion for one thing or another. I continue to search for the holy grail of stuff I can use for everything 😀

  3. I understand the work frustration. I work with a bunch of people who don’t care if it’s done RIGHT, it just needs to be done. My boss is the worst, and he makes all kinds of mistakes. I end up picking up the pieces. They hired an assistant for me, but she moved away. I keep trying to tell them I’m probably better off by myself.

    I know how you are about needing order. I hope Todoist works well for you. I’m trying to figure out what will work best for me. Keep us posted on how that app works for you. I hope it’s the answer you need!

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