Weekly layout

The other day, I mentioned a bullet journal weekly spread I created and have been using for (more than) a couple weeks. Here are some random reflections about it:

• A lot of planners on the market have horizontal (?) spreads where the days are stacked on top of each other rather than side-by-side. I really appreciate a layout that matches roughly how I visualize a week, somewhat like a week that has been cut out of a monthly calendar.
• Admittedly, I'm a huge opponent of monthly calendars beginning with Mondays. However, for a weekly spread, this is working out just fine. The Saturday and Sunday of the same weekend being on the same page works out nicely, and splitting the last column allows six columns to divide nicely onto two pages.
• The vertical layout also is a good shape if I want to think of each day from morning to night. I can interweave appointments and todo items roughly when they occur (or might best occur) during the day. (This is the concept of the "Stubby Todo List"--a short todo list of the things you actually need to complete in that day, as opposed to the infinite running todo list that is never completed; it's advised to write this in chronological order.) I don't number all the hours, but if something happens in the evening, I'll write it and the time at the bottom of the rectangle; something around noon goes in the middle.
• Which brings me to the "todo" section. This is where I put todo items that don't have to be completed on a certain day, but probably that week. If it doesn't need to get done on that week, I might put that task on my monthly task list, to migrate to the appropriate week or day later.
• "Notes" is for random stuff/planning/doodles.
• The four sections to the right of "notes" is something I invented when I came up with this spread. Right now it's serving as a landing place for special projects. For example, I'm trying to blog more often, so if I come up with a blog topic, I'll write it in one of the big squares, and when I post it, I check it off. Or if I want to work on decluttering the garage for 15 minutes I'll write that in one of the squares. Any bigger project that has multiple steps goes in here. I aim to create bite-sized pieces of projects that will move the needle on the goals in my life. 
• (I had a week when I knew life would be really out of routine, so I filled in those squares with gentle self-care habits that I knew would help keep me sane. By intentionally listing stuff there, I wouldn't be able to write in unrealistic projects that would lead me to feeling disappointed in myself for not accomplishing them. Literally, I made the squares: (1) Queer Eye, (2) be kind to yourself, (3) order take out, (4) FaceTime a friend this week.

Like I've said before, this is totally new to me. For years (14 to be exact), I've used a basic Moleskine (or Moleskine-esque) notebook to just list All. My. Todos/ideas. in a running list. I did the stuff in whatever order and then migrated the uncompleted tasks to the next page whenever I turned the page. I appreciated that I never lost an idea and also that it gave me the freedom to do things when my brain wanted to do them.

It clearly worked for many seasons, and there probably will be more seasons to come when I will go back to it. (In fact, I imagine in the summer when life and time is more fluid, I probably will go back to that format.) But for right now, this is meeting a need. It's helping me manage my days and weeks to make sure I don't have too much or too little on any given day.

I'm going on Week 6 (longest I've kept up a weekly spread before), so we'll see! For now, I'm celebrating something that is working for me.

Habit trackers

I made a monthly habit tracker spread in my bullet journal this morning for April. Even though I've been using the bullet journal format since late 2019, I've only created and used a handful of monthly habit trackers spreads.

This is my very first one in December 2019:

It really helped me boil down what are critical things to do everyday and it gave me the tiny reward of getting to check off a box / color it in.

I used it one more time in January of 2020 and then drastically simplified it in March of 2020 to something like this:

Haha that was so cute of me to do a sleep tracker. It's the only time I did it but I thought it looked cool in someone else's bujo. I think at that time I was really struggling with feeling rested when I woke up, so I was trying to figure out patterns.

In the tracker above I must have been focusing on the habits that pertained most to mental and physical health. (David remember those DIY kettlebells you made me when the yoga place shut down??) 

I didn't seem to keep it up much tracking the rest of the year (probably pandemic related?).

In January of 2021, I brought back the habit tracking but more in a micro format, focusing on absolute essentials to guide me each week.

I created this habit "widget" for the the first time I tried a weekly spread, rather than just letting my day take as much space as it needed. It helped for that time, but I didn't keep it up for too long. I think after only two weeks, I got bored and/or felt too limited by the weekly spread. (Some weeks I need to write a lot, and others I don't need to. Having only two pages per week just didn't work for me for long.)

Incidentally, I recently picked up weekly spreads for a second time, and this time it seems to be working a bit better. I think it partly helps that I've found a way to make it vertical rather than horizontal. And also I think I'm in a season where it's good for me to see the limits of my time.

I had a couple weeks in February of 2021 where I somewhat continued the weekly habit tracker interspersed into my daily logs. 

When the kids were doing remote learning at home it was nice to have some routines, something that was just for me to do and didn't have to do with anyone else's anything.

That leads me to today, more than one year later. It was surprisingly fun to put together.

I could give more details on this if you're interested, but one thing to note is that these things are roughly in chronological order for the day. Some are habits for which I need to get back on the wagon (e.g, I've been sliding towards at 5:45/6 am wake time lately), and others are ones that are pretty habitual and yet I'd like to reward myself with a checkmark nonetheless (e.g., making the bed). Others are just cues to my schedule, such as switching over laundry (and a super new habit of using the Delay Start option on the washer to prep a load the night before). The timed items are just minimums; I find it helps me just to get started.

When I sat down with my journal this morning I wasn't expecting to make a habit tracker; rather, it had been on my list to think about my April goals/foci. I had been mulling over it for the past few days, and while I had some ideas, I also felt really overwhelmed by the thought of tackling my goals. 

The habit tracker seemed like just the right thing to keep me moving forward and balanced into spring. My goals can't be accomplished if my sanity isn't in tact, and my tiny habits every day are a huge part of maintaining my sanity.

--

Do you use a habit tracker? Please text or email me a picture if you do! I'd be so curious to see what you're working on.

The books I read in 2020

I've been in a bit of a reading rut and have been asking friends to help me get unstuck. Christine responded by asking me what has worked for me lately to give her a launching point for her suggestions, so I plan on enumerating that below in this post.

(PSA: If you don't want to fall into a reading rut, do not read Cara Wall's The Dearly Beloved. I repeat, do not read this beautiful book by Cara Wall. Everything you read after will just not live up to the beautiful prose and striking descriptions of humans in relationship to others and their faiths. If, after this warning, you choose not to heed my advice, then maybe just follow it up with Vanishing Half, if you haven't read it already, but I'm sure you have, and so I'm sorry.)

(Thankfully, my friend Sharon is here to save us all from book rut despair. When I asked my personal Modern Mrs. Darcy what to call the genre I cannot get enough of, this is what she had to say: "I've been trying to figure this out for myself, and my working category is quiet literary fiction/character studies and family sagas (though there are some family sagas I dislike, like the super dysfunctional ones of which I have read far too many). By quiet I mean that there's very little action that happens, haha, and when I describe it to someone else I feel like a crazy person because there's so little plot progress." YES, YES EXACTLY! She then pointed me to Anne Bogel's recent post for more great books to enjoy. You're welcome.)

Okay, returning back from parathetical land.

Paradoxically, in the midst of this book desert I've been drowning in (sorry for the morbid mixed metaphor), Julia Cameron (of morning pages fame), whose course The Artist's Way I've started working through, instructs in the chapter I'm currently on to take a week of reading deprivation. (Yes, you read that right. No reading anything for a week. I think it's supposed to propel you to create your own work instead of consuming other people's work.) 

I'm not sure I can stand to not read for a whole week, but I have not read for the past 8 hours (big whoop, I know) since I read that assignment. The self-imposed inability to not turn to a book to pass time has already created a vacuum for other stuff, such as facing this blog. 

Today I will use my extra time to tell you about what I read in 2020. 

I've been tracking my reading for two years now. I made a fun bullet journal spread in 2019 and then used Goodreads more in 2020. (Goodreads = great tool, but geez they did not need to be so rude about me not meeting my reading goal last year. "Better luck in 2021" -- really?!)

Here's a pictograph (?) of my 2019 reading:

One thing I'm really proud of is reading more fiction in 2020, increasing my measly 6 in 2019 to 24 in 2020. 

Before I get to my a complete list of my 2020 reads at the end of the post, here are a few highlights.

Favorite fiction:

- The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall

- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Imma blame Tolstoy for me not meeting my Goodreads goal)

- The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

- Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Favorite narrative non-fiction:

- Educated by Tara Westover

Favorite non-fiction:

- Burnout by Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski

- Untamed by Glennon Doyle

- The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary (helpful and challenging enough to me that I'm re-reading this again this year)

Favorite (albeit only) Illustrated Memoir

- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

I actually listened to an audiobook and enjoyed it:

- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

And here's the list in its entirety, in roughly chronological order as I read throughout the year:

Still Life by Louise Penny
Atomic Habits by James Clear

Educated by Tara Westover

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Shrill by Lindy West

A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua

Dear Girls by Ali Wong

Slammed by Colleen Hoover

Pride by Ibi Zoboi

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Small Fry by Lisa Brennan Jobs

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Cozy: The Art of Arranging Yourself in the World by Isabel Gillies

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Cider House Rules by John Irving

Little Gods by Meng Jin

Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

Re Jane by Patricia Park

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Anna K by Jenny Lee

There, There by Tommy Orange

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen

Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg

The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall

The Rule of One by Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders

Please feel free to send me recommendations for my next read and/or wish me "better luck in 2021"!

Also, raise your hand if you, like me (and Stephie and Chris*), slow down when a book is so good, because you don't want it to end, ya weirdo.

_______________

*Maria, feel free to let Chris know his first blog shout-out happened today, although I suppose he doesn't really need to read the post since he already uses your Goodreads account to stalk your friends for book recs.

Meta footnote be with you

(With a title like that - so sorry - be prepared for a super stream-of-consciousness post.)

Yeesh, lots of things going on in my mind these days and I am way behind on updates - Christmas, New Years, two birthday, etc.

I have been wavering* about setting up a so-called "editorial calendar" or posting schedule, but I think it could really help me approach my blog with less fear.

[*Lisa footnote: the other day I was journalling about how I am lacking structure in life but that the reason I wasn't putting it into place was because I was fearing that I was idolizing it. And yet because God made me this way, maybe that fear message was really from the Enemy. And then I realized one of the labels for my Enneagram type is "Devil's Advocate." (!) Talk about mind-blowing. And then today when I was reading Healing The Purpose of Your Life by the beloved Linns of Sleeping with Bread, they discussed how "one clue to our sealed orders will often be what we like least about ourselves" (65). I wrote in the margin, "my ability to see both sides in every situation, when taken to an extreme, leads me to paralysis / without a guiding center."**]

[**meta-footnote: this is what happens to me when I go a long time without externally processing. I go crazy!]

So. Where does this leave us? I see both sides to the situation:

1. Having a schedule allows me to write without having to think about what I'm going to write about; the topics will have already been decided.

2. Having a schedule may limit what I can write about, and might also prevent me from thinking creatively about other things beyond the plan. Also, it feels like doing what Everyone Else does.

Writing this out, I feel that the cons are somewhat lame: they are my excuse for not wanting to do this, they are what help me feel like I am taking a risk.

I think what I am discovering about myself is that what feels like no big deal to most people feels like A Very Big Deal to me.

***

One benefit of having a schedule will be less of the "random" posts where I lump 2349083284723 different types of information into one post. But until I get to this schedule, bear with me while I dump: (This is supposedly done for your benefit but also so I can close the 2349083284723 tabs open in my browser currently.)

• I loved this article on longing and limits. 
• An interesting, if not provocative, essay entitled "Is Parenthood the Enemy of Creative Work?"
• Currently making my first ever batch of kombucha!
• Okay, this is totally not me, but when I saw this my heart stopped for a second.
• Sometimes doing the most important thing on my list for the day first, even if it seems very minor and certainly not urgent (and thus it doesn't seem prioritized based on schedule optimization), can make a tremendous difference in the flow of my day.
• After listening to the Liturgists talk about meditation, I have been trying to incorporate some (you'd probably call it secular) meditation practice into my life lately. I've been doing it almost every day for over two weeks now and I think it is making a huge improvement in my stress, anxiety, and depression. I think it is also helping me have more patience with others and myself. Insert thumbs up emoji.
• Do you Bullet Journal? (Kendra has the best introduction if you need one.) I have avoided jumping on the bandwagon, despite its seeming similarities to the Moleskine hack for GTD that has worked for me so well for almost 10 years now, and which I keep going back to despite attempts at other planners/life management tools. I am wondering if it will help with my currently-very-scattered brain.
• Related: I finally bought a cheap notebook (ironic because you're probably supposed to use something cheap you have laying around the house that you don't care about, but I #konmari'd those) to do Morning Pages. I found Chris Winfield's article on it through Google today and it finally sold me on it. 
• Also related: when I read this article on the Pomodoro method of productivity on Lifehacker, I thought it was a joke / April Fools' hoax. That was last week. Then today, when clicking around on Chris Winfield's site after discovering him today, I was quite convinced of the benefit of the tool, even if it's just used as a nmemonic device, a way of reminding yourself to mono-task, and to do so for a certain amount of time. I don't have a traditional job, and I don't quite have the freedom to work in eight 25-minute shifts of work every day, but I have (usually) some moments of time to myself every day that are pretty regular (during naps, and independent playtime) that I can use to focus on specific tasks for a set amount of time. Today I made sure to not browse during naps (in general, I'm trying to not do anything while the kids are asleep that I can do while they are awake, such as cleaning, etc.). I got some reading, writing, and thinking done, AND I cleaned up the garage for 21 minutes (I set timers for 8, 7, then 6 minutes). I got a LOT done in less than one hour.
• (Back to the Bullet Journal, one final time. Because it's because I've used a makeshift BuJo for four days that I can even remember some of these randoms to tell you. The Bullet Journal centralizes things that we tend to think are more compartmentalizable. It messes with me and also jives with me. This must be related to the pendulum swing of my mind.)

Okay well I hope I didn't lose my small readership with all that cuh-RAziness! I hope to bring you some more order and structure, but that if I don't do that any time soon, please show me some grace. Thanks everyone!