894 words today, 73,447 total for the manuscript. Not quite at the halfway point yet. (Sigh.)
Today is the last day of classes for the first term of my grad program, and man alive am I busy. I’m about 98 percent finished with my final project for today’s class, but our professor also assigned us three chapters to read from our very dense textbook. That was kinda mean, but okay. After today’s class, I still have three more projects due on Thursday, one of which is going to be super time-consuming.
I talked to an old friend of mine (we were randomly assigned freshmen roommates at Duke twenty-three years ago) about how I’ve struggled to stay on top of everything, and she sketched out for me her own method for tracking her priorities when she went through law school a decade ago. I adapted her method and came up with this:
Across the top of the grid is the day of the week. Down the left hand side are the major arenas of my life — school, writing, health and personal development (which includes things I do for physical health, mental health, and spiritual health), my relationships (not just my romantic one), and finally “maintenance”, which is a catch-all for those obnoxious chores we all have to do to exist, like folding the laundry and buying groceries. At the very bottom, I’ve made a note of things that are coming up next week.
Anyway, I’ve never been good at sticking to a method for getting things done. I think it’s not so much that I’m inherently disorganized so much as I get bored with a particular method and move on to another one. But I share this anyway since it’s been useful for me lately, and I’m hoping it will also be useful for you. 🙂 I will say this: When I write down my goals for the day, regardless of the method I use, OR when I record at the end of the day what meaningful things I accomplished, I am almost *always* less lazy and more productive. Plus, it helps me to keep my larger life priorities in mind.
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