Week 2 — The joy of the ‘DONE’ list

Week one down, and it feels like it’s been a month.

Don’t worry… I mean that in a good way.

There’s got to be some truth to that idea that time reduces when you are doing the same thing every day, but when your brain is forced to process new experiences, it ‘slows time down’, or something like that. (I’ve never been any good at physics or biology, and I’m sure this has something to do with at least one of those things, if not a combination of both, right?)

Anyway — it’s a new experience to NOT go to work each day, so maybe that’s why. Or maybe it’s because getting on public transport in the London rush hour takes years off your life as well as hours off your day, and staying home instead returns some of that time to you, a bit like a cashback credit card.

The other good news is I stuck to my plan and I’ve been up at 5.00am each weekday. On weekends, I decided to let myself wake up when I was ready — which proved to be somewhere between 6.00 and 7.00am on both days — and I’m happy with that. Still gives me lots of morning time!

And as promised, as soon as I woke up, I leapt energetically (or rather stumbled about in the dark trying not to wake up my fella) out of bed and wrote my Daily Intentions in my journal for 5–10 minutes, to get my head sorted. It’s quite a feeling being all set to to tackle the day at 5.15am! Just you and the buzz of the fridge, sitting in a darkish room (no need to put the lights on too brightly at the crack of dawn, that’s way too much of a shock to the iris) imagining the long hours ahead in which you have agreed with yourself to be productive.

The hardest part of this was not, as you might think, the getting out of bed bit, but rather the breaking of the habit of an (iPhone) lifetime; NOT checking my phone the minute I wake up. I am used to grabbing that reassuring bit of telephonic hardware, heading straight to the BBC app and finding out what kind of a day I am likely to have ahead of me at work (British political party infighting as the lead story, there’s the possibility of a gentle start to the day— a tsunami affecting 10 different countries, not so much!). From there, well, it’s just a tap and a swipe to check my emails, Facebook, the current state of the London Underground and the truly essential business of oohing and aahing over first-day-back-to-school photos of my friends’ children in Australia… But NO! I ignored that little fount of all knowledge, and (with intention!) picked up my journal instead, because ‘intention’ is the name of the game people! Who is in control? I AM!

Of course, come 5.15am — Facebook is once again fair game. As I have said, we’re dealing with one habit at a time here!

The big, big win of Daily Intentions was identifying my Peace Mission each morning, and with that, a plan to get it done.

These were the missions uncovered for the week:

Monday: Tax Return—less than a few days before the final deadline. (Serious repercussions if I didn’t do this — Peace Rating of 10 once achieved!)

Tuesday: TOP SECRET PEACE MISSION! Major research/planning for an upcoming 50th birthday surprise event for someone. I can’t tell you too much more about this obviously — otherwise there will be no surprise — but it will pop up again as there are several levels to this planning! (Could be put off until later, but the longer you leave things like this, the fewer options you have, prices go up etc — Peace Rating 9)

Wednesday: A plan of attack for www.colorshopper.com my current main business venture. I’m beginning to get antsy that I haven’t got such a plan in place, because I find it difficult to even get started without creating checkboxes first. (Given that this is the venture I’m hoping will make me my fortune while wearing (silk)pyjamas, allow me to live life as a digital nomad, was one of the reasons I left my job and is supposed to be filling up a good chunk of my working day, it is pretty essential I get on with it — Peace Rating 8)

Thursday: Finish reading book. (Sudden panic as I realise I haven’t finished reading the novel that is going to be discussed at my book club tonight. I DO NOT like to go to book club unprepared — Peace Rating 9)

Friday: Wednesday’s mission revealed that I ACTUALLY need to sort out a whole load of notes I’ve made over the last few months of my startup business training, and that it is going to be difficult to put together any Color Shopper checklists without consolidating the notes and producing a more general ‘How to put off any real work by consolidating all your notes’ plan first. (So — onto that, a big job — Peace Rating 8)

Saturday: Buy walking shoes/sneakers. (The shoes I wear nearly every day — well, every day that I actually venture out of the house as I’m a big believer of cosy ugg boot slippers unless absolutely necessary but I’m banned from wearing those out of the house unless it is a quick, sneaky run up to the corner shop — are on their death bed after three years of service, so I need to find replacements. It is a lovely day to go into town and do a bit of London exploring with my fella as well, so, as good a time as any to visit a shop for practical and boring but necessary such items— Peace Rating 7)

Sunday: Put together a Pinterest strategy/plan for Color Shopper. (I know it sounds like a lot of planning and not much doing, but hey, January is a good month for planning and I have one day left to enjoy it before Monday, which is February, which everyone knows is when you ACTUALLY have to start doing something. And besides I had put it on a list of tasks I intended to accomplish for my Startup Accountability group and as I lead the group I would look really bad if I don’t do it — Peace Rating 8)

When you start, your Peace Missions are likely to be up there at the 9 or 10 level. But eventually, you run out of those, and you start dropping down the scale, meaning every day you can breath a little easier. Of course, you can always get a surprise attack (like a leaking roof) that provides you with an instant level 10 mission to contend with, but generally you should be heading in the right direction. You might even find yourself at a total loss once you have dealt with all your level 10s, (are you a Person of Drama? Are you used to living on the edge? Is a level 7 just not enough angst for you on any given day?) or there might be a nice little level 4 which, when you get to it, opens a Pandora’s Box of level 10s, just when you thought you were on top of things (I’m talking here of something like ‘Explore idea of renovating house’ — sounds perfectly innocent until six months later when you are cowering in the corner of your now trashed home, with a big gap where the wall used to be, in the winter, hiding from builders demanding you answer their questions on whether you want your tiles mitred or not, and you haven’t researched it, and you don’t really know what it means, but you have to make a decision or the whole project will be delayed by six months. You know, that sort of thing!)

Obviously, identifying your Peace Mission is not enough. You also need to get it done. And that means carving out a little bit of time every day to do it.

Now — to be fair — as I don’t have a job to go to or yet have anything else glued onto my Jenga Tower of habits, everything after 05.15am has been a lovely white space to fill with whatever I like. Don’t worry — I KNOW I’m the luckiest girl on the planet right now. If I need six hours for my mission, I can have it.

But there’s every likelihood this is not the case for you. You may have a job, and/or children, an ill parent, and possibly a time-consuming plane spotting habit — I get it, your time is super precious, I’ve been there. But, listen to me, you STILL DESERVE your little bit of peace each day. And that means deliberately intending to do something towards your mission — even if it’s only 15 minutes. If you can’t complete your Peace Mission in the time you have set aside for one day, that’s fine, just carry it over to the next. In fact, it will carry itself over, because that tax return is STILL likely to be your most pressing concern on Tuesday if you haven’t managed to get it finished on Monday. If you only have half an hour every day then it’s likely to present itself all week (unless you are some kind of accounting gladiator on a very nice but highly addictive banned substance who can add up a year’s worth of receipts at the speed of light) until it is finally DONE, and then you can embrace that little waft of peace (baby), inhale it, and hold it in for as long as you like.

Because a sense of completion is important…

Which brings us to this week’s habit. The ‘DONE’ list.

It’s all very well breathing in the waft of peace, but that’s not enough for me. I don’t want the transience of the breeze, I want something concrete I can gaze at whenever I’m feeling lost, or sad that I have at least three unwritten novels hidden in a box of (unsorted) photos, or even just a bit hard on myself because I don’t seem to have achieved as much in my lifetime as a friend’s 18-year-old ticked off during the first month of her gap year.

The ‘DONE’ list is a one-stop shop of all things great and small that you have managed to achieve during the week.

It’s a beautiful thing.

That’s mine from last week — and seriously, I get a proper surge of satisfaction every time I look at it. It lets me know that despite my misgivings I did get quite a bit done, that I have indeed made progress and it’s absolutely fine that I don’t yet have a multi-million dollar business with accompanying podcast ready to go for February 1st — because look, I have lots of checkboxes with genuine, real life ticks in them. And you don’t get those sitting around watching Loose Women all day!

This week — start your own. You may be surprised how much is on there by Sunday night. ‘TO DO’ lists are so 2015. 2016 is about the ‘DONE’ list coupled with appropriate celebrations.

Troubleshooting

  • Having trouble remembering what your Peace Mission is a couple of hours after you have identified it? Write it on an index card and carry it around with you until you’ve done it and then you can have a ceremonial burning.
  • Not really into carrying index cards because it makes you feel like a bit of a dork? Get Siri to remind you, or use some other smart phone reminder widget type thing.
  • No time for your Peace Mission? There’s always 15 minutes! What about your lunch hour, or train journey, or when the kids are happily settled playing with matches — there’s always time somewhere!
  • Don’t know where to write your ‘DONE’ list? Evernote, your iPhone Notes app, on your Google calendar, on your fridge, or again, you could try an index card (maybe gather up all 52 at the end of the year and use them for some kind of New Year drinking game, or make a tasteful collage!)

Other good things which happened last week

  • I was approached about some work which will probably only be a few days a month, but will take me to different places around the UK, and play a role in the training of future journalists. Always lovely to be approached — keep them coming guys!
  • I went to a photography exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery and was introduced to the work of Saul Leiter, a street photographer I had never heard of. Loved his fashion photography!
  • I tried a new (for me) local coffee shop on a sunny afternoon
  • I drank prosecco, ate fabulous food and had spirited discussions (some of it even about books) with the gorgeous women in my book club

Keep up with the Daily Intentions, ace those Peace Missions and build up those DONE lists…

I’ll speak to you next week.

(Thinking you’d like to join this slow-moving ‘make the most of your day/productivity/I have to justify giving up my job’ train? Just click the ‘Follow’ button and we’ll do it together. We’re only two weeks in, plenty of time to catch up…)