On Getting Stuff Done

This post grew out of some comments and discussion on my "eye-opener" post, about how much stuff I actually did get done last year.  Some interested questions brought about some moderately lengthy answers from me. And it occurred to me that expanding on those answers might be interesting, and maybe even useful, to others. (Do any of you remember WWKD some years ago? About how Katherine and Kendra both seem to turn out such amazing stuff so regularly? IIRC, Katherine's response is basically that she "just does it"! I'm too much of engineer to just dive in like that, but it did help me as a reminder that at some point, you have to stop the research and just get going.)

This is NOT a "How To Be Successful!" post.  It's merely the result of me looking at the numbers, going "huh, even a perfectionist thinks this isn't failure," and then pondering when and how I simply do the stuff.  A lot got done on holidays on vacations, but I'm going to focus on the day-to-day approach.



First, some caveats: This is very much suited for my circumstances and personality.  Circumstances, which I mentioned in the previous post, involve full time work, a large number of activities, and soloing the household. For what it's worth, my work is a 9/80 schedule, which means working 9 hrs/day M-Th, and 8 hrs/1st Friday, off 2nd Friday.  It's still 80 hours in a two-week period. Good things? 3-day weekend every other week. Bad things? 1 fewer hour an evening, and errands accumulate.  I like the 9/80, and I try to use it smartly, but it's not the secret to my success.

Personality: I'm an ISTJ, though more moderate than I used to be. I sometimes say I'm halfway to an engineer in my approach to sewing; I prefer flat patterning to draping.


I came up with three different aspects of how I do what I do:

( Read on if you want to! )

Aaaand that's it! Most of this, now that I've written it, is simply the result of (a) identifying when and why I don't get things done, and (b) finding strategies that give me the when and the why.  There's also a healthy helping of Staying Self-Aware in it. It's taken me a long time just to recognize that I'm feeling frustrated, or blah, or unenthusiastic. Once my mind kicks in at that level, though, I can think through to the why and do a fix-it.

Hope that wasn't too boring!