Weekly Discussion Post

[lunabee34]

Comment to tell us about what you've been up to with your journal, planner, or other stationery related items. Tell us about a new pen or a coveted notebook. Consult the hive mind with a problem you've been having. Post a picture! Whatever goes as long as it falls in the realm of journals and planners. Remember, you can always make your own top-level post, too!

Comments

[mothereader]

I admire your dedication. I stopped migrating daily pretty quickly. Usually, when a lot of tasks would get undone, it would be down to two things: i was having a bad mental health day or i wasn't considering how much time each thing takes me. When it was the latter, my method was to batch tasks visually in my bullet journal and sometimes also to sketch out when i'm going to do certain things, either in a digital calendar or on a piece of paper. The batching thing is really helpful to me though.

[vriddy]

The daily migration is not thaaat bad because I'm using a weekly system, so if something doesn't get done in the day I might move it to tomorrow or I might just mark it as "postponed", knowing it's already in the weekly box for me to try again later in the week. I wonder if it's similar to your batching system? I'd be curious to learn how batching works for you, otherwise! It sounds helpful.

Postponing them all whether to the next day or later in the week still annoys me because it feels like I should have a better handle on how much I can get done in a day by now, and also all that stuff still needs to get done at some point, haha... I'll figure it out eventually, hopefully!! The "taking longer than expected" example certainly resonates.

[mothereader]

When i'd sit down with my bullet journal, i'd go, "Okay, i have 2 hours today for my chores. What can i get down in that time?" And then i'd list all that i could think of and i'd stop listing once i thought that all the tasks combined would take me 2 hours. I'd do this for every category of tasks i could think of. I had an additional space where i'd keep track of all the tasks related to projects, so i could only list the tasks i thought i might do that day (and sometimes being very wrong). That ended up giving me blocks of tasks in my journal, or batches.

But then when i'd start working, i'd work on a project for a set amount of time and i'd reference the block related to that project. Then i'd take a break and think, i need to do some chores and i'd refer to the block with chores. Then i'd go back to work and referencing the block for the same project or another one.

I tried listing out tasks in the order i meant to do them, but that didn't work so well for me. Also i then had a huge block of tasks that were one, difficult to read, and two, difficult to write too since i had to keep everything in my head until i got to the time i thought i might be able to do it. By listing them out thematically, or categorically, i can keep much better track of them and i find it much easier to estimate how much time something will take in the future. Something about my mental state when i see a batch of tasks vs. the entire wall of them i used to have.

[vriddy]

Oh, that's cool, thank you! I rarely sit down and think "okay I'm gonna do more stuff that's not on the daily list already now" but right now, that's probably because I start the day with too many already. I think I probably need to use projects more for tasks that have many sub-tasks. I am sort of doing it, but because I'm not good about keeping the main project page up to date once it's squeezed into a few daily tasks it's less reliable... but I think that could be helpful. Thank you for the thoughts!!

[mothereader]

You're welcome!

I don't plan ahead. I might set myself reminders if i need to do something on a particular day, but by and large i plan the morning of. (I tried planning the night before and it's just setting myself up for failure, doesn't work for me at all.) Also, even if i do have leftover tasks from the day(s) before, the priority isn't the same each day and i try to do things with higher priority first.

To be honest, i'm not good at keeping the project page update either—i think of it more as brainstorm. I check in at each stage so i don't forget anything important and check off done tasks then, but i usually know what i need to do without the project page and sometimes i figure out i need to do things that i didn't know i would need to do when i was setting it up.