Category — Uncategorized

Modern Mrs. Darcy mentioned in her last newsletter a practice that she has been doing where she writes down one positive moment, one important moment, and one frustrating moment from every day.  She goes on to admit that seeing all the frustrating moments in her own handwriting was a bit demoralizing at first, but she turned it around and now uses those moments as a motivator.

I write down one sentence per day in my bullet journal, focusing on whatever feels like it defined my day.  Sometimes nothing particularly memorable happens during the day, but most of the time I can point out something I was worried about or thinking about even if nothing momentous occurred.

That bullet journal daily sentence would count for the important.  Sometimes it’s positive — usually it’s positive — but sometimes it’s negative.  If there are two defining moments in a day — one positive and one negative — I try to record the positive one because I want to look back on my year fondly.  I know there are negative moments in there, too — like March 14, 2017 (“Snowstorm made us lose our Yayoi Kusama tickets”) — but I want to flip back through the months and feel like it’s a fun exercise and not a painful reminder.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s research led her to an important ratio — 3:1.  Three positive thoughts counterbalance one negative thought.  So one positive and one negative and one either positive or negative (since “important” can be either) means that the negatives loom large.  You’d need three positive and one negative to have the two sides balance out in your brain.

It’s important to learn from mistakes.  It’s important to apologize and understand what you did wrong so you don’t do it again.  But I can’t see how it would be helpful to dwell on one of my boneheaded daily moves.  I’m not sure if I would see it as a motivator.  I think if I wrote it down daily it would become proof of my negative qualities vs. a spark pulling me away from them.

This is one improvement practice I’m going to have to skip trying.

What do you think?  Would you find listing frustrating moments motivating?

So you may have noticed that I’ve been trying out a bunch of self-improvement things — decluttering, meditation, productivity tricks.  There were a bunch of popular self-improvement books on sale in January, AND I’m doing research for a project.  Anyway, I’ve started noticing that each source of advice comes with a caveat that the advice will only work if I stick with it long enough.

I think you know where I’m going with this.

But first, a case in point: meditation.  I’ve now tried several dozen meditation apps INCLUDING meditating in VR.

[Sidenote: Can we pause for a moment to talk about that?  It’s divine.  You put on the headset and you feel like you’re sitting on a beach.  You can look behind you and see an expanse of sand.  You can look in front of you and see gently lapping waves.  And then you sit there for a half hour while a voice gently talks you through meditation while you stare at the ocean.  It is amazing.  I want to cry the whole time I’m doing it, which negates the whole meditation thing.  But still.]

[A side note to THAT side note: The Wolvog sent me on a VR adventure in Bora Bora.  I felt like I was standing in one of those bungalows over the water.  I could look around the room; walk over to the deck and peer into the crystal clear water.  It was amazing.  I cried with that, too.  I get a little overwhelmed when he sets up VR experiences for me and get his headset smeary.]

Anyway.  Back to the point.

Every single meditation apps comes with a caveat.  It will take time to get into it.  How long?  They never say because it will be different for each individual.  But the message is that it WILL work if I stick with it.  It may take days or it make take months, but as long as I don’t drop the practice, my mind will one day embrace meditation.

I am totally on board with the idea that things take time.  Learning a new skill takes time.  And I can even accept that meditation is a learnable skill.  But I start pushing back whenever the “stick with it” clause gets mentioned because I’ve experience too many areas of life where I can dedicate myself to a task fully and still not reach the outcome I want.  When I hear that clause, it brings out this contrarian side to my personality that developed during infertility and now comes out to play whenever I hear that something applies to everyone.  Or all.  Or anyone.

No.

I want an app that say, “You may be able to learn meditation, but you may not.  And it’s not because you didn’t try or stick with it long enough.  It just may not work for you, and that’s okay, too.  Find something else.”

THAT is what this contrarian needs.

And at the same time, I’m really bummed by this residue from infertility.  Infertility changes your personality in strange ways; some obviously connected to the experience and others that take a twisting path.  That you don’t realize until you realize it.  And it was a sad day when I realized that the experience brings out this contrarian side, too.

A few days ago, I wrote about how I front load my week, and people commented that they had no clue what I was doing that required this type of to-do list.  So I thought I would (1) explain my schedule and (2) explain why I think you SHOULD write down things like “cook dinner.”

So the first part: I’m a contractor, which means I do work for a lot of places.  In order to balance all those projects and make sure everything gets done on time, I write it all down.  I never miss a deadline because I can pick up my bullet journal (which is where I write down notes from meeting as well as any tasks that isn’t taking place this week) or this weekly paper to-do list and see what needs to get done by the end of the day.  I’m not great at keeping things in my head.  If it doesn’t get written down, it doesn’t get done.

So there is that: I need this sort of to-do list because I work for many places.  I use this paper to-do list in conjunction with my bullet journal.

I DO write down things like cook dinner, go grocery shopping, clean the house, and see a movie.  And this is why: I don’t want to put off things so I don’t schedule more than what I have time to do in a given day.  I may move things around from time to time when new things pop up, but for the most part, I can look at how full a square looks and judge accordingly before I promise to do something.

So, for instance, I kept last Thursday pretty light because I knew I had tickets to see Hamlet at night, and it’s a four hour play.  I was going to have a hard stop by 6 pm at the latest, and I had to pick up the kids from school, make dinner, and eat dinner before the show.  So, really, a soft stop by 4:30 pm.

Knowing that, I scheduled as much as I could into Wednesday and Friday because I was trying to be realistic about Thursday, and I bumped a few things to the weekend rather than promising them by the end of the week.  If I had just written Hamlet in that square, I probably would have scheduled myself for more things, not thinking about all that goes into getting to the show on time including driving people, making a meal, and consuming it.  So I would have probably felt panicked by Thursday afternoon with my to-do list looming too large.  Instead, I got everything done because I reminded myself of everything big that needs to get done.

Do I put down ridiculous details?  No.  But the stuff that will impact how much I can get done goes on the list.  Every meeting, every project, every task that other people need me to do, every drive to an activity, every cleaning task that will take longer than 10 minutes; it all goes on the list.

I don’t think I’m abnormally busy, though my work situation means I have to organize myself in a way that I didn’t have to do when I worked for a single entity in a single location.  But I think I would still schedule my to-do list like this even if I was still teaching because it means I can visually see how my day will unfold.  It helps me to not overschedule myself but it also helps me to not underschedule myself because I do like to be involved in things.  And now, when I say “yes” or “no,” I do so knowing how much open time I actually have in my day.

Which means I can host holidays or join boards or get involved in supporting a local campaign and know that I have time to get those things done with everything else that I’m already scheduled to do.

So, yeah, write it down.  Write is all down.  It will help you rethink your life.

And yes, writing this blog post was on my to-do list as “write daily blog post.”

I was listening to the Science of Happiness podcast — the episode with the director of Inside Out — and Dacher Keltner mentioned that humans experience 21 or 22 distinct emotions.  So my first question:

Is that more or less than you thought there would be?

I assumed that there were many more emotions, but when I tried to list them in my head, I didn’t come close to hitting 22 (so I’m not sure why I thought there would be more).  I looked it up when I got home, and it turns out that Keltner has a piece on Greater Good stating that there are 27 emotions.

[I put the list below because while that last link is fine to click on (it takes you to the study), the study contains a link to an emotional hypermap that shows the videos people watched to chart their emotional response and arrive at the list.  And I really really really wish I hadn’t clicked on the hypermap because I saw some disturbing images/videos.  So, just a warning that if you do read the study, don’t click willy-nilly on the hypermap link embedded in the article.  It seems a little irresponsible that the study didn’t give this warning, so I’m giving it to you.]

• Admiration
• Adoration
• Aesthetic Appreciation
• Amusement
• Anxiety
• Awe
• Awkwardness
• Boredom
• Calmness
• Confusion
• Craving
• Disgust
• Empathetic pain
• Entrancement
• Envy
• Excitement
• Fear
• Horror
• Interest
• Joy
• Nostalgia
• Romance
• Sadness
• Satisfaction
• Sexual desire
• Sympathy
• Triumph

So those are the emotions.

THEN I listened to Guy Winch as a guest on Note to Self, and he had this great point about how people only list one emotion/sensation when people ask them how they are.  They don’t say that they’re joyful with a little bit of envy mixed in and a sprinkle of excitement as they think ahead to weekend plans.

They say they’re sad.  Or they’re happy.  Or everything is fine.  I realized that I often answer that I’m tired — mostly because I am tired — but tired isn’t an emotion.  Though I don’t know why it isn’t an emotion if calmness is an emotion (and… if calmness is an emotion, why isn’t impatient or agitated?).  But anyway… I just thought it was an interesting idea to state two or more things the next time you’re asked how you’re feeling.

As I’m writing this, I feel anxious and content with a bit of satisfaction thrown into the mix.

How are you feeling?

I read a list of productivity ideas, and I put one into practice about a month ago: Planning the next week on Friday.  I actually took it a step further and plan my weeks Friday to Friday, which means that I’m actually planning my week on Thursday.  But… let me explain what happened.

Every Thursday, I take a piece of paper and fold it three times so I end up with 8 sections when I unfold it.  Then I write the days of the week at the top of each box, EXCEPT I slip an extra title called “Open Dump” after Sunday.  So if you’re looking at the paper, write Friday in the first box on the top left, then Saturday to the right, then Sunday in the box below Friday, then Open Dump to the right of Sunday, then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  There’s a point to this.

So I write everything that either must get done or I think can get done on Friday, being realistic.  I mix work and personal in the same box because it’s all the same 24 hour period.  So, I create a tiny to-do list of meetings and cooking dinner and remembering to send an email and all of that.  Then I do the same for Saturday and Sunday, adding in things that we are going to do as well as maybe one or two tasks I would normally put off to the next week.

Then I get to the Open Dump box and I write down things that I need to do in the future.  So, for instance, I have a work project coming up that I’m not going to work on this week.  But I put it in there so I remember to schedule it in next week.  That square is a dumping ground for future thoughts.  Then I continue, Monday through Thursday with the rest of the squares.

I try to finish everything in the daily square and put a big slash across the square when it’s done, but if I don’t get to a task, I schedule it two days from that point (unless it is so urgent that it needs to get done the next day).

This is what tends to happen.  I look at my week and think, “Okay, I need to get all these things done on Friday.”  If I have any time, I look ahead and grab something off the Saturday list and do that, too.  So usually, when I wake up Saturday morning, one task is already done and I feel like I’m ahead instead of behind.

This snowballs through the week, making me feel like I’ve already gotten huge tasks out of the way before Monday is really underway.  And this feeling continues every day because let’s say I don’t get to something on Monday.  It goes on the list for Wednesday, right?  But I usually can get to it on Tuesday, so I start my Wednesday feeling like something big is off my plate.

My days are still the same, but my experience of looking at my to-do list feels different.  Things aren’t pooling on Thursday and Friday, making me feel like I’m dragging towards the weekend.  In fact, the list feels lighter and lighter as the week goes on.

It’s all just an illusion, but I’ll take it.