If you know me, or you have been following these somewhat random notes of mine, you will know that these come from the mind of an overwhelmed overthinker.
The last two weeks have presented various hurdles, of which I will not go into detail now. Let us just say that having a routine checkup on Tuesday could land you in hospital on Thursday in the midst of work and parent chaos. Also, bad things don’t always just happen in threes… It could be multiples of three. Anywhoo, so I have not had my head attached correctly for a while and thus just doing some chaotic form of crisis management. So my excuse is that I did not have time, while the truth is probably that I was in a funk and did not feel like it.
Silence and stepping away from something do however always bring some time for reflection, self-doubt and avoidance – an ongoing spiral of the overthinker.
This afternoon I finally sat down and did a debrief. The purpose was to just get everything out of my mind and onto paper. Categorise, sort and try again. A lot of the last 12 months have been dedicated to figuring out how to manage my time effectively and juggle various responsibilities. Mostly because I was overwhelmed and this caused anxiety. Many of these little discoveries have been noted on this blog. I started implementing the bullet journal method. Most days this helps me to stay on top of things. On other days, however, things happen that were not on the list.
What has been serving me well is my basic daily layout. I use a double-page spread divided into four columns (2 per page). Left-hand side is dedicated to all the “to do’s”. One column is for work and one for personal stuff. Some get filled out in advance and some are noted as they pop into my mind. Right-hand page is for physical and emotional stuff (in essence this is the “mindfulness page”). General notes and tracking on whatever is going on with me that day.
Now, this layout has been going for a while and has helped me to keep my day and my thoughts structured. It has also given me a sense of putting things in a box… all things don’t belong together and, more importantly, don’t need to be attended to immediately.
The challenge however was that if at any time I wanted to refer back to something I could not find it. I then started using little symbols as part of my notes. For work that was easy because I could allocate a 4 letter project title shorthand (used by the whole company) but for the other stuff I had to figure something out. So I gave it a little time and noticed that I use a circled B for anything to do with the blog, and a circled Wi for anything on my wishlist; T for anything that I want to track and a little scribble for things that irritate me. As you can imagine there is a long list. But with some time I figured out what works for me. Now all my pages are filled with little symbols as well which can easily be used on my “stop start continue rambles” as well.
The next step was to figure out how this can be usefully sorted. In came the weekly debrief. Yes, I know this is overkill for many, but for me it is a useful exercise to calm the mile-a-minute thoughts that keep bouncing around in my mind. I had to decide what categories were important for me to keep. In other words what did I want to refer back to later. Some examples include:
- Work project notes
- Blog post ideas
- Things I want to research
- Go to dinner ideas
- Shopping wish list
- Home improvement project ideas (including things that we will have to save for first)
- Challenges
- Prayer list
Then I had to figure out where these could debrief to. For example, the dinner menu ideas go into a folder each with a different category (sides and salads, baking, mains, braai etc). The actual recipes are linked on Pinterest allowing me to link my weekly menu’s that I post on Fireside. This serves as a handy reference tool for when I am stuck with my menu planning. Things I want to research and blog ideas each have their own little notebook in my Traveler’s notebook. A topic per page, allowing me to make notes as I read. Work project notes have a debrief Trello board. These are only applicable to things that I know I will need to refer to later and that is not handily available in my email folders. Home improvement project ideas usually end up on a Pinterest board for inspiration (and I see now that you can add your own notes to Pinterest, so this feeds right into my note-taking addiction). The challenges go onto sticky notes to ponder that get stuck on my ongoing dashboard. They then have the power to harass me until I think of a solution or simply give up.
A very positive starting point for me was to acknowledge the things that I already take note of. For example, I am on Goodreads for the books that I read. I use my Garmin to track my weight and exercise. I am on Youtube music to give a thumbs up to any music that I love.
What do you track and note obsessively?