Have you ever fallen down the Pinterest rabbit hole, where you blink and the realise an hour has passed and you are no longer clicking on what you searched for originally? This is a little addiction of mine. I am working on it.
When I started my planner, Pinterest was a wonderful source of inspiration and ideas. I loved to see what other people incorporated into theirs. How their bullet journal system works. What they draw and colour and washi tape…
I also very quickly then develop some handwriting envy because some dotters just have beautiful penmanship.
One of these Pinterest excursions introduced me to the traveller’s notebook. A system that many people use for journaling and planning and incorporating all the parts that make up their life. It allows you to keep everything together, but still separate and this really appealed to me. As with many things I immediately opened Google and clicked on the shopping tab and could not find anything like the beautiful images I saw on Pinterest.
I abandoned my search and started my planner system in a beautiful yellow Filofax. I would have given up on my traveler’s notebook had it not been for a small little Facebook community called Bullet Journal Group for South Africa! Not only are these individuals who adore stationery and writing and planning but also people who instantly give recommendations when help is asked for. Members inspire one another with beautiful page spreads and journaling and planning tips. I was thrilled to find a community that got as excited about highlighters as I do.
Individuals on the group are happy to share their planning systems as well as where they found the perfect dot journal. What also increasingly rocked up on the feed were people singing the praises of some of the small privately run businesses that make beautiful bespoke stationery, stickers and yes… my traveller’s notebook!
Props for Dots stocks stickers, stamps and washi tape, a little bit of everything really. The range was however recently expanded to include beautiful handmade Traveler’s Notebooks and I immediately fell in love. I sent an email on a Saturday and it was immediately answered by Lonkie Loosemore who sent through prices and followed up with samples and colours and questions about the pockets I would like. I even got to choose the colour of the stitching. I was blown away by the personal service and thrilled when my beautiful bespoke TN showed up a little more than a week later.
I tried to take some photographs but it does not really do it justice. She even sent a matching pencil case, all handcrafted and gorgeous. I think my yellow Filofax will still be my day job planner but I am so excited about the possibilities that are opened up by the TN. Thank you very much Lonkie at Props for Dots, I will cherish it always.
My experience with psychiatrists is somewhat limited. I saw one for two years on and off in my twenties and started seeing one again after the Lilliputians were born for postnatal depression. I am however a big believer that if you identify that something is up, it is important to deal with it and not ignore it. And you cannot manage what you do not measure.
One of the very first tasks she gave me was to track my emotions on a day to day basis. This was never for her to review but instead for me to become aware of how I am actually doing. As this process developed I realised that it also helped me to identify triggers for specific things. This first task was given almost two and a half years ago and I am still doing it. My plan for this has been quite varied, as I have not yet been able to find a perfect fit.
Initially, I had it as part of my habit tracker where I would fill in daily if I was feeling happy or sad, etc. But I only kept it up till the middle of the month and then abandoned it. So August 2020 gave me some time to review this process and read up about the importance and the purpose of emotional tracking. For some inspiration on mood charts, you can start here.
I had to go back to the drawing board and decide what the purpose was. I identified that I want to see a pattern over time and I wanted things to be clearly defined. I want to be able to link certain emotions with specific events or lack thereof. For example being more agitated on days that I missed my run. With this mission, I came across Dr. Susan David, who wrote a book titled Emotional Agility.
Although I have not read the book myself I have found various resources and little extra’s that enhance this title. The one that I want to chat about today is the notion that we sometimes use very vague terms to describe our emotions. For example, saying that you are happy can mean a lot of different things. It can be that you are grateful, or content, or even relieved. Saying that you are angry can mean that you are frustrated or disgusted or offended. She defined the various descriptive words that can be linked to anger, anxiousness, shyness, happiness, feeling hurt, and feeling sad. You can view the different ones here.
I have translated the various ones for my journal and will use these as a guide to check in with myself on a daily basis. Every day will therefore probably have more than one word, but at least this makes more sense to me than saying I am happy or sad.
-Time management, time blocking and the death of my eight-hour workday
If you have followed these rambles for a while now, you will know that I am someone who:
Gets distracted easily
Struggles with a lot of things happening at once
Am super motivated every Monday and lose that spark by Tuesday afternoon
Can no longer work crazy hours because I apparently have a life, and because, honestly, I don’t want to
The Engineer and I had a discussion last night about how working from home (or living at work) has changed our mindset about the eight-hour workday. The difference is interesting. The Engineer enjoys the freedom of being able to move things around, get something done after dinner, work on the weekend. I on the other hand really struggle with feeling guilty towards my family because I am working and then feeling guilty about my work because I am … doing the washing. So while my time management is focused on the fact that I have limited time to do everything, he is focused on the fact that things can fit into a little box. I have also learnt in recent times that just because you work crazy hours, does not actually mean that you are more productive.
It is in fact, also bad for you. This study in the Washington Post states that “A growing number of studies are examining the link between long hours, health problems and productivity. And what they’re finding isn’t pretty.”
The Economist wrote a piece on how we should “get a life”.
Some even state that boasting about the long hours is a sign of failure.
We would never have worked from home had it not been for Lockdown2020. We would definitely not have had discussions about what mop to buy or fought about unpacking the dishwasher because we would never have been here during the day for these things to be on our radar. But here we are, a publisher armed with sticky notes and planners and an Engineer who has just been introduced to the term time blocking.
Type “time blocking” into Google and you will find an abundance of information. Type it into Pinterest, and you will find templates and designs and various individuals stating that it has changed their life. Over the past weekend, the Engineer bounced into the living room, armed with his phone, showing me that the app that his team uses at work has a time blocking functionality and how fantastic that is. I nodded and smiled but felt a little chuffed that he has a little understanding of my planning brain.
At the beginning of August 2020, I challenged myself to try it. I have read a lot about it and realised that the principle behind it is something that fits into my sticky noted, colour-coded way of thinking. At the time I also knew that anything that could give me more productivity during my day would be an improvement because this ship was sinking, and fast.
So I needed a plan. I have already been bullet journaling for a little more than a year, and I feel that I have worked out a little system there that works for me. Among other things I have learnt that I am without any doubt a paper-based creature and that I am okay with that.
Since I started with my planner, I have figured out that my day needs a double-page spread. So an ordinary day would look like this:
Boss lady worker ant things are on the left. On the right is the “home stuff”. So it has a personal to-do list, a space for physical things (I am a bit of a symptom checker because I believe that physical things trigger emotional things and vice versa). On the other half of that page is a column for all my annoyances, things that I love, things that I hate, little plans, general rambles (note how I limit my mind to only half a page!). I think that people who seriously journal will understand this section.
In short, the above method is what I have been using to get myself through the day. There is a lot of motivation in being able to colour a little box when something has been done.
Towards the end of March I realised I relied a lot on my team’s work to be reminded of things. I thrive in an office environment because I can slot my tasks in with the others, but suddenly in isolation, I realised that I was forgetting things. Again I turned to my planner for assistance.
Added to the planner a weekly divider, that had tasks arranged by project and also a daily divider on which I could stick important things of that day. Daily work pages were then used to actually write down those things that were accomplished, yes, so that I can colour a box, but also so that I did not lose my mind.
Pretty soon, however, these would be updated on a Friday and then simply be moved from day to day with very little progress. So my action plan needed to be revised. I was introduced to the concept of time blocking a while back but thought it to be … well… a little overkill. I then looked at my small handwriting and my colour-coded sticky notes and realised that overkill would suit me just fine.
I started with scheduling the first hour of my workday, every day, to go through the email that has come in and jotted down my tasks. I then also go through every project (in our case mostly journal titles) and write down what needs to happen with those on that particular day). This list appears in no particular order on the work page of my planner. And then, yes, I schedule appointments with myself in Outlook. If the appointment has been set, the task gets a little block next to it in my planner and when it is finished I can colour that block. Currently, the day is broken up in 30-minute slots from 8 am to 4 pm and every half an hour is accounted for. If I finish something in 5 minutes I can go on to the next task. It does however really assist me in what I need to be focused on in that 30 minutes. I am also not distracted by other things that need to happen that day, because I know that I will be getting to it.
This has now worked fairly well for about two weeks. I have however realised today, that I am reinventing the process every morning. So in came the next phase. I have now created a simple laminated sheet. I can stick my tasks on there and move them around if things change… because they always do.
And yes, I know, there are a lot of fancy apps and programs that can do this for you electronically, but I still get a thrill from colouring that little box. There is a lot to be said for a sense of accomplishment, even if it is a small task. This also helps me pinpoint what I am avoiding.
So this lengthy ramble tries to depict how I am trying to fit my eight-hour workday into eight hours. It also helps with the guilt situation, because it shows that I have actually done things on a particular day and it allows me some free time to write about it, like now.
In recent months I have become a little obsessed with planning and scheduling, lists and sticky notes. South Africa is now on the 45th day of the National lockdown and the additional responsibilities have multiplied the lists. Up to a point of over management (there are lists for the lists).
*My apologies for another post focused on the lockdown but “[…] the mouth speaks what the heart is full of”.
I have always known that I am not good with change. I feel that if you at least acknowledge it, and warn others, then it can be managed (or adequately ignored). So seeing as the Engineer knows this about my little obsession (17 years of lessons) he is not too phased with the lists and plans and the sticky notes. My colleagues love the planner in me, due to the nature of our work and the Lilliputians, well they are too small to care, they probably think that it is like this in every household.
The challenge, however, came in when I started to annoy myself. I took up a form of bullet journaling in April of last year. I did some research on the topic and the various options and started my planner with a clean slate. The daily pages have changed numerous times, depending on my priorities and at the beginning of 2020 I thought that I should get a quote and have my pages printed because they are now exactly how I want them: A double-page spread per day, right-hand side work to do/done and left-hand side split into a section for the emotional stuff, the physical stuff and then a to-do/done section for personal things and home things. Every week had a menu planner and a shopping list and every month had a habit tracker. There were sections for the various areas of my work and things were neatly compartmentalised, documented and colour-coded. And then things changed. And it kicked my ass.
So suddenly my habit tracker was not applicable anymore, because in the complete lockdown I could not go for a run, so no boxes to highlight there. I tracked my online spending, which came to a standstill in the lockdown because things could either not be bought or not be delivered. My personal to-do which use to include things like a manicure appointment or a girls’ night once a month or a dinner party at our house, now included things like changing the sheets and mopping the floors and making sure that the kids are attending the Zoom music classes.
So yes, the habit tracker became a cleaning schedule and the water tracker became hours logged for work and my plan… well it changed into something else.
For more than a month now I have struggled with this. I have felt guilty because I have struggled and complained about things that other people manage in their stride. I have been ticking things off and other days I have been disappointed in myself because I could not. I have been picking fights with the Engineer and my kids because all the boxes were not ticked.
And then, in a chat with someone (yes, someone I pay money to help me figure these things out) the following seed was planted: in a time where you have no control over something that is changing everything, you would have to change some of your priorities and your focus. I find this to be especially true because everything is now in one place: work and home and school and dance studio all have the same address. And also because I struggle to do things in the same amount of time than I use to at the office. So things that used to be very possible are now impossible. So I had to start with a clean slate again. Adapt my mind and my planning and my lists to things that are necessary and relevant and important now.
I have therefore taken some time in the small hours and made a list of the things that lockdown has taught me thus far – the lockdown lessons. Here are a few of the items:
You miss a lot of your kids’ development and growing up during office hours, and this time with them is a gift and a blessing.
I can now fold a fitted sheet.
Just because things take longer does not mean I am doing it wrong.
I do better on the days that I get up and get dressed and tackle the list than the days when I try to sleep a little later and start the workday in my PJs.
I will always be a planning listmaker even if the environment changes – and that’s OK.
I love cooking with my family (we have had something else on the menu every night of lockdown and tried many new recipes thus far. Dinner around the table is the best part of my day).
I love my dance classes not only for the dancing but also for the vibe and the people and I miss them all terribly.
Cleaning the oven is really hard.
There is a lot to be said for a day where you know you don’t have to go anywhere and I often don’t appreciate that enough.
The Engineer would happily remain in lockdown for the rest of the year because it means that he does not have to shave.
The list goes on and grows daily.
I realise that my personal experience during this time is somewhat irrelevant and the change that I experience is minuscule when placed next to the everlasting change in the economy and the world. But I have also learned that one should not dismiss the things that challenge you or make things hard by saying that it is not important or not comparable to the situation of others. By saying that you say that you are not important and ignore the truth that people deal with different things in different ways.
