Mañana by other means

One of my tweaks for 2020 is to restructure my working week, with Monday and Tuesday dedicated to one kind of work, and Wednesday-Friday split between work and app dev. This new tweak starts today.

A trouble with this split, as I’m realising sitting here, is that this new work is still a blank sheet, and unstructured. And I’m new to it. When working or doing app dev, I can be deep in focus within minutes of sitting down, because I know what I need to do, why I need to do it, and, often, how I need to do it. With this new work, I’m unsure of both the what and the how. I don’t even know where to start. (Answer: start with why).

This blank sheet is unsettling. So I’m quickly discovering other things to do. Like realising how the work desk needs dusting, or that an unrelated spreadsheet needs updating, or that I should write this post. I guess the first few days of this work will be a struggle of sticking with it, learning more about it, and creating a structure—a mental model in the head and a workflow on the table/computer. And a struggle of avoiding all the suddenly alluring distractions—like practicing French instead.

Pushing myself into a corner

I’ve run at least 100 km every month this year. I want to keep this streak going.

After Sunday’s run, my total for October is ~82 km. I needed 18 km in four days. It seemed like four days of easy 5K runs would do it.

I skipped the run yesterday. I claimed sore muscles as the excuse. Then it appeared like three days of 6K runs would do it.

I’m skipping the run today too. Work load and gloomy skies are my excuse today. Now I need to run two consecutive 10Ks in next two days.

Unless I skip tomorrow’s run too, and end up having to run a half marathon on Thursday 😕

Procrastinating through work

I need to do two big, hairy, scary work tasks. One is important and scary (unknown outcome), the other is hard (unknown input quantity, unknown outcome).

Instead I have been working all morning finishing off the less important, less scary tasks from the todo list.

I am procrastinating—escaping work by working on other stuff.

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