Four Recent Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

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1. We frequently travel to visit my in-laws in Florida, and that's where we spent Christmas. On this last visit, I decided I wanted to keep my routine of walking an hour a day going during these visits. Somewhat to my surprise, I found a perfect route on my first try: A wide sidewalk along a road near their condo extends much further than I thought, based on memory.

I can now maintain my walking routine during these trips.

2. Some wins are simply good fortune or, more precisely, recognizing good fortune. Twice over the past month, misfortune struck at times I would have chosen if I saw it coming:

(1) Just ahead of Christmas travel, I noticed a problem with the family car that was going to take it out of commission long enough to require us to rent a car for the trip. This gave us added capacity (which we needed) and sure beat finding out during the trip.

(2) A few days ago, I stubbed my big toe badly. Putting on my shoe the next day reminded me, and I found a nasty bruise and a cut bad enough that I'm limiting the amount of walking I'm doing for a few days. I miss my hour-long walks, but the weather has been so cold, windy, and wet, I probably would have missed a few anyway, and enjoyed the ones I could have taken a lot less.

3. A recent review of the metrics section of my planner caused me to remember that, while taking my son to the orthodontist, I'd started reading Atomic Habits, by James Clear. I liked it, but the holiday hubbub crowded it from memory.

If your kitchen timer isn't a penguin, you're doing it wrong. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

Now, I have a reading session for it each day as a metric -- which I usually complete while I'm walking. I am impressed with the book so far both for its clarity and its engaging style.

4. For some kinds of work, I use the pomodoro technique of alternating concentrated effort with short breaks. Often, I use it if I have lots of boring tasks to power through.

For a long time, I'd do a weekly review of assorted admin tasks and thinking on Friday, and laundry over the weekend.

Recently, it dawned on me that since much of the work for laundry is loading and unloading machines, it would be a good stand up and move kind of pomodoro break.

So I tried starting laundry on Friday, during my weekly review. This works really well and, as a nice side effect, weekend travel out of town is much less disruptive, because I don't have to figure out when I'm going to do the laundry.

-- CAV