ROW80-1 12/03/17 - New tools?
March 12, 2017
I keep looking for ways to deal with my poor productivity, as I procrastinate and often get distracted by sparkly things. As do many of us. ROW80 is a good way to proclaim your goals to your peers, and thus set yourself up for some peer pressure/guilt. Which does work, but I also have been looking at more task and time management tools. I use a Pomodoro app when writing, to set a writing/break timer, which does help. Proper sleep is an issue, so I've added a tracker for my slumbers, that also can record my alleged snoring. It links into the iHealth app, which also tracks exercise, as in getting out and doing several thousand (5000?) steps. And finally, I've added in Streaks - strangely named but designed to build habits, to encourage a 'streak' of several days/weeks in a row for an activity. You're limited to only six tasks, but the idea is to focus on only a few things. Once one of them is fixed as a habit, you can replace it with another tardy task. I have Get Up (as opposed to lie in bed forever), Daily Yoga, those 5000 steps, Write/Edit 2 hr, Monday to Friday, and other 'writerly' tasks for an hour each day - such as book promotion, writerly articles, agent searching. I didn't feel the need to add read, watch Netflix, or play video games.
Oh, and I've been Facebook free for 10 days now! It's a great way to stay connected to people and events, but a great time suck. I need a way to manage it, and maybe just use as an author.
But, since my girlfriend has been gone back home a few days, I'm back at things, so here's some status:
- Write- Well, no Facebook, which is maybe a good thing.
- Write better
- Went to my first meeting of the Capital Crime Writers. My first two books are crime with a bit of supernatural - a blend they don't all support - but we'll see how it goes. The meeting had no networking time (?) but there was a good presentation by someone from the local police fraud department. She outlined some different types, and threw in a lot of valuable jargon along the way on how their process works.
- I got caught up, yet again, on two weeks worth of blog posts, via Feedley. Some good tips in there.
- Publish
- Return to Kirk's Landing - edits finalized with my publisher and he'll order more copies ASAP.
- Ghost in the Machine - draft is out, and started my own editing.
- Reading
- Book club - I finished the next book, Capitol Murder, by Phillip Margolin. I did go to the meeting today too - sort of. It's actually next week!
- Finally caught up with my back issues of the New Yorker.
- Other stuff
- Social - Great visit by my girlfriend - laidback but pleasant times. We visited my daughter with my girlfriend and had a delightful dinner, And fun with the kids. Got to visit my son and his family, and also dinner at a couple my girlfriend knows from way back. Less pub visits - expensive, gets noisy, not good for health. But, the alcohol does mean more random conversations than at say my local coffee house, but they're not always that stimulating.
- News and stuff. No FB, so much less. Just notifications from WP and NYT on my iPhone of things to read.
- Fitness - them steps. And yoga.
- Netflix- Watched a great movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
- Games - Some EuroTruck Simulator.
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