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Thursday 22 November 2007

What works, what doesn't

Well, the plan to use this blog as my depression/dysthymia management goal-setting tool isn't working quite as well as I'd hoped. Not because I'm not meeting my declared goals, but because for some reason I have trouble remembering (or finding time) to update my progress and make new goals.

On the other hand, to the degree that I have been keeping up with the goals, at least for the week that I think of them as 'active', it is working. I've also hit on a strategy for dealing with domestic tasks, based on my 10-minutes a day strategy for practicing my ASL signs. I call it "10-minutes of domestic activity and then I can quit".

Here's how this works. One of the problems for me is that I have trouble starting things I can't finish in a timely fashion. So nothing ever gets done, as my attention span dwindles to about 10 minutes. So I've giving up on finishing. Or rather, I'm not seeing finishing as part of the success model. Now I just have to sit down and do something that *helps*--sort laundry, do dishes, take down the recycling, scrub the shower, whatever. I just commit myself to 10 minutes. No pressure. No "I'm not done until this room is clean", "I'm not done until all the books are put away", "I'm not done until...." Being done is not the goal. Just spending 10 minutes doing is the goal. Every day. After my 10 minutes, I have achieved my goal. If I then feel like continuing for any further length of time, that's progress. If I actually get around to finishing something, that's victory. But the goal is small and achievable.

So here are my goals for the coming week:
  • 10 minutes of ASL a day
  • 10 minutes of some kind of domestic activity a day
  • solid second read and begin notes for a review for one journal
  • solid first read of a paper for a review for another journal
  • reading and prep of two papers for the seminar
  • paper notes for the proposed land grab we're planning in the department
  • remembering to take a glucose measurement at least five times over the week
  • finding time (maybe after Yoga on Monday) to update my progress on the above

That's actually a lot of work and not much in the fun and recreation department. I'll have to work on that for next week.

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