How Lack of Proper Weekly Planning Caused Depletion And Messed up Progress in My Week

Like my title? Couldn’t think of one.

So yesterday my project went of course - I ended up getting quite depleted. Willpower reserves 0 after bashing my head into my writing habit. And not really having direction in my marketing habit. This caused me to mess up eating and not record yesterday. Why did this happen?

A number of reasons. One was not properly planning my week. I scheduled a bunch of tasks for Monday which I KNEW I wasn’t going to finish. So I spend the rest of the week trying to catch up, which is not a good feeling, AND it ended up messing up the course of other things I had to do later in the week.

So first - properly plan things out. A part of that is to really break a part tasks. I can’t just say - “Throw up a huge post with pics on my website.”

That task isn’t one task - it’s writing the post, it’s editing it, it’s sourcing the pictures, etc. By NOT breaking it up I am encoding failure in the planning part of my week - I’ve guaranteed failure.

Breaking up tasks is also important because it contributes to a flow state. You get the most progress by having small accomplishable tasks that are challenging that you can go through. Each victory contributes to a momentum of success.

Secondly get up earlier.  I have a sleeping problem. Whenever I wake up late, like I’ve been doing since being in Houston, I wake up behind. Everything shifts. I wake up, and people want me to do stuff. I’m always several steps behind. I’m beginning to understand why a lot of authors got up early early in the morning. There’s no way to get into a groove if you’re being rushed.

But it’s not particularly surprising that all this happened. I’m BAD at planning, and this was only the second time during this project I’ve ever really done it. It really should be a habit for me, as should an early morning wakeup schedule.

Regimentation Part 3: The Fog of Fear & the Repulsion of Planners

In a previous post I took a pic of old habit notes I had from high school and discussed my habits in middle school. I was really bad at them. But that’s ok, I’m getting pretty good now.

Another thing I was really really bad at despite trying constantly was planning. Planning ANYTHING. I had so many planners, but it was really difficult for me to keep to a schedule - it was almost like as soon as I wrote it down something would emerge from me, a perfect procrastinator who would see it as a challenge, preventing me from finishing a task when it was scheduled.

And I still have this difficulty. There’s an almost nebulous revulsion that arises when someone tries to pin me down to something for, say, next wednesday at 4 pm. I start immediately squirming and grasping for ways to at least have an exit should I not want to go to a date when the time comes up.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to nail down tasks for the next 6 weeks. I believe that one aspect of this project that I’m lacking in is week to week, month to month progressions. I should know what I want to accomplish for a month, and how, week to week, the sub projects contribute to that overall goal. And how that goal progresses to the future. Which is essentially the realm of planners.

When I did this a great fog arose in my mind - like some subconscious part of myself was trying to erase the focus for the task of planning. It was agony, which was pretty hilarious. I take this as a positive sign a la Stephen Pressfield - when he talks about that quality as being a compass pointing north - it tells you exactly what you need to work on.

So I need to work on this, and I have to believe that if implement it correctly, I can improve my regimentation ability. Should this be a separate habit? I can see it as a Sunday task, sitting down to plan out what I need to do for the week and course correcting. It would certainly give me the opportunity to experiment to see how only doing a task once a week affects the habituation process. It’s something I’ll have to think about.