I’m going to try a tweaked format for this week. I partitioned my review/plan by areas I’m currently focusing on in my life, and I’m going to review-by-partition and include plans for improvement in each chunk. Let’s see how this goes..
Mp-wp bot delivery
I have the production server set-up and my test plan complete but I still need to… actually test! This weekend was not very productive for me; I slept in way too much both days and just didn’t get as much done as I wanted. Still I think I’m fairly close to ready with this bot at least. Definitely will be able to give it a shot next week and it looks like MP is back in CR so it should time out fine.
Still, this is a problem with me. I fought hard to escape what was a nice excuse for not being productive (my ex) but I’m still the main cause. My primary problem I think is I still am not waking up to TMSR work like I keep saying I will each day. It is too easy to get swept away in the 101 other things throughout the day. As for the solution I’m going to touch on that in the “General life organization” section below.
Saltmines
While speaking up did help ease my pain a bit at this mine, I definitely need to keep applying to other places. I hit my 5-applications-sent quota for this week, yet aside from automated responses I’ve yet to hear back from the others (from my past job hunting experience, this does seem par the course). Other than continuing to churn the sea of want ads I’m not sure what else I can do here for the time-being.
House clean-up
Going smoothly. Next up is the living room which I’m gonna aim to knock out by end of next week. It should only take a couple of hours anyway if the other room was any guide.
Note to self: need to hire a cheap landscaper before mid-March.
General life organization
Here’s where I haven’t been doing well; namely with waking up on time and sticking to my plans, etc. In terms of waking up / not sleeping in, my problem is going to bed at a decent hour. Now, I really hate going to sleep when I’m not tired / waking up when I am. Ultimately if I had a remote gig than this problem would be less pronounced so this has been good fuel for my new-saltmine search.
Nevertheless, I still have to live in the meanwhile and I haven’t been consistent with improving my sleep schedule so I need to make some changes. First off, I drink too much coffee late in the day so that needs to stop. Second, I set up this alarm clock in one of my rooms to go off at 11pm each night. I figure even if I ignore it I’ll still get that reminder often enough that maybe it’ll sink in. Finally, I need to “dial in” to thinking about my Republican work (aka actual work) before saltmine stuff. The quickest and most rational way I think I can ease myself into this is by doing at least one simple thing every single day: wake up with enough time to eat / have coffee while reading the logs / blogs. I used to do this back in the day but have recently fallen out of this habit.
Blog
My blog queue is getting backed up. I need to get my final penance article out, and I’d also like to get a Shinjiru write-up / HostOne write-up complete. I’m going to commit to at least 2 hours writing something for my final penance article next week.
This is usually a matter of proper setup + gradual change really. Despite what people might hold near and dear that they “can’t” change one patter or another, the truth is that *any* pattern can be changed – some might just be more painful to change but that’s about it all. So, for the gradual: start from where you are and simply move 10-15 minutes earlier with both sleep and wake up every day but *stick to it*. To help with “not tired” – get tired, there’s plenty to cleanup I hear, so do all of it until tired, what. There should be anyway no screen/computer at least 1 hour before sleep, so perfect time for cleaning/tidying and all that. Not like there’s anything that can’t do with MORE cleaning/polishing/scrubbing (navy style if needed, what) until that stupid that insists “not tired blah”, will stop.
You know, you have this very gingerly does it approach to problems -or so it looks from here- but all that does is to make all problems last longer and otherwise eat up your resources in the process.
Comment by Diana Coman — March 2, 2020 @ 12:51 pm
Yeah, this makes sense. Starting with tonight I’m going to try and stick to the plan of staying away from screens after midnight (about 7 mins from now). I’ll do some cleaning and then hit the hay and record the time; gradually ratcheting it back by 10 min chunks.
Well.. I am a ginger! :D But in seriousness I see what you mean- I do tend to approach things in this light manner. I’ll try to be more aware of this habit of approach going forward
Comment by Eric Benevides — March 3, 2020 @ 5:00 am
Saltmine got most of my time today so no real work done. I still have Wed-Fri to test however, and then the weekend to deliver the bot. The no-screen-after midnight + some cleaning helped last night with falling asleep on time (the cleaning also gave this restful/orderly feeling as an endcap to the day which was nice for priming sleep). Will aim to pull that no-screen-time cutoff back to 11:50pm tonight.
Comment by Eric Benevides — March 4, 2020 @ 4:16 am
Do try to get some non-saltmine work done too, don’t keep pushing it with the idea that “there still is the weekend” or something. There *also* still is a lot of work to do!
Glad to hear the sleep adjustment strategy is working and keep at it!
Comment by Diana Coman — March 4, 2020 @ 7:43 am
Yeah, I really have been putting off the non-saltmine work this week. I’ll be happy once I can free myself from this current pickle. I’ve been thinking of this final penance article and I think I ought to focus it on my present situation, with an eye to outline my still-standing bad habits from my past that I need to kill. In any case, thursday/friday I aim to spend time on my testing work that I’ve been neglecting.
Comment by Eric Benevides — March 5, 2020 @ 4:17 am
Sounds good. And as a bonus, it should even help to ensure that the 3rd is indeed the last article in that series (because let me remind you that 3 was given as a minimum, not as a maximum :P )
Comment by Diana Coman — March 5, 2020 @ 7:54 am
This is true! Yes, I do hope it remains the last in the series.
As for today’s review: The lack of free time during last week was felt a bit tonight as I will be finishing testing tomorrow. Still, not much left to test/review so hopefully will have everything ready this weekend. Will be starting first thing tomorrow.
Also for this weekend I need to spend those two hours on the article and I still need to send out those job applications.
Comment by Eric Benevides — March 7, 2020 @ 5:59 am
I’m glad I started testing now because I’ve found bugs; unicode errors still (even though I swore I took care of em before). Will be investigating that more tomorrow morning along with getting my weekly review/plan out. Other than that I still think I should be good for delivery of this bot as it looks like Tuesday is when MP will be free. I ought to have some extra time tomorrow to work on my article, so I’m going to see how far I can get.
Comment by Eric Benevides — March 8, 2020 @ 6:27 am
Given the Tuesday deadline is set and it really should not change, I’d say the bot is your first priority at any rate. But do make sure you spend your time on it productively, as this sort of more-errors-though-I-remember-taking-them-out points to some potential troubles with the approach there.
Comment by Diana Coman — March 8, 2020 @ 7:46 am