Tuesday 25 June 2019

One more week until six months of posting!

Even though I've successfully been using my planner for nearly six months, I absolutely guarantee if I hadn't committed to posting evidence I'm using it online, I would have stopped this month. Even a habit of six months isn't long enough for me to fully integrate it.

Honestly, I feel like I need to do something continuously for like... five years to even have a hope in hell of continuing to do it without accountability stuff in place.

 So does this mean I plan on doing a check-in for another 4.5 years? I don't know. Maybe? This level of accountability seems to do wonders for me. I like just a little pressure on me to do well - too much and I just wanna give up, too little and I get complacent.

I know I'm doing better than I would otherwise be, if I wasn't keeping a planner, and to keep a planner I need to feel accountable, and for now, this is the best method of accountability I've found - it works, it doesn't require me to rely on another person to hold me accountable (just the idea of another person) and it's time-efficient.

That said, while I've been doing better, I'm still frustrated with how easily I drift off into my own world, even now when I have the opportunity to do the work I'm most passionate about. Is it the ADD? My potential aspie-ness? (I'm undiagnosed, but I have my suspicions based on the things I recognise in myself hearing other people talk about well-passing women on the spectrum). It's just so easy for a single stray thought to absolutely dominate my attention out of nowhere, at almost any moment. My brain is constantly ready to leap into a new tangent, a new little question-and-answer with myself.

It's one of the factors that makes sleeping difficult for me - the brain never really stops or slows down. Sopophorics like hops extract, passionflower, and supplements like magnesium, sifrol and melatonin help (I can't have valerian, I'm one of those people where it actually makes you more awake) but they don't offer any kind of certainty over me being able to fall asleep within an hour of my head hitting the pillow. They just increase my chances.

It's not just drifting away that slows me down, or tiredness, there's plenty of other things - events, commitments, illness, family etc. that get in the way of me completing the tasks I set out for myself. But I could still do more if I could focus more easily.

I haven't been on social media much of late, and that's definitely helped - the less random ideas and stimulus, the less likely I am to totally get captured on a stray thought. I miss talking with my friends, though.

Everything is a balancing act. As always.

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