Scheduling Myself

It's been a good year, or maybe half-year.  My semi-annual projects appear on course less than two months into the current cycle, and did mostly well for the previous six-month block.  Some projects easy, sure things.  Others need slow but steady.  Those have done better.

There might be many inflection points, though not overt tipping points.  I enrolled as a research subject for my state's flagship university.  It required a measure of physical activity that I could not have completed a year ago.  Some intense exercises to my right quadriceps and brisk walking over a half hour.  What enabled this was my commitment to a treadmill schedule and YouTube stretching video.  I set times to do these things, essentially appointments with myself.  I know the scheduled days but left flexibility with the times. Now I have a fixed time, rarely violated in the absence of another conflicting place I need to be.  And whether OLLI, synagogue, or doctor visits on schedule for the morning, I make an effort to walk on the treadmill first.

My personal writing has done better, though acceptance for publication has not. I get more submissions.  Enough shots on goal will eventually get through the net.  I have a fixed time to sign onto Word.  I've also tapped into the wisdom of experienced writers who do the same.  One that I admire sets a daily word quota, another writes a regular column with a word target.  I use a timer.  My intent had been 90 minutes five days weekly.  I find that my mind only focuses for about a half hour at a time.  But starting at a fixed time most days has made all the difference. 

Even recreation and personal learning get timed.  I watch YouTube after supper, usually with one long video and a few shorter.  Curiosity Stream gets watched on my smartphone before retiring for the night. I question the wisdom of this, as the blue light screen may disturb the sleep that follows, but a Curiosity Stream video remains a second tier priority.  Even sleep times, really in and out of bed permissions, have gotten fixed times.  My smartwatch tracks sleep stages, really the surrogate markers of sleep stages.  Middle of the night wakening remains unresolved.

While comfortably adapted to the unscheduled life of retirement, I realize there are advantages to a work model.  For forty years I went to work.  I did tasks assigned and undertaken voluntarily, irrespective of how I felt, either about what I was assigned to do or my self-assessment of energy.  The clock ruled.  I met deadlines.  I had times to do payroll and pay taxes.  Hospital time took place at predictable hours as did patient office encounters.  I expected myself to leave the house on time and not return until the expected tasks that should not wait until the next day had been done.  Scheduling has become harder, or more correctly, easily postponed with little immediate consequence.  But as my exercise schedule yielded its benefits over about a year, those small but consistent efforts accumulated.  My YouTube videos, plant maintenance, shabbos observance, and monthly financial review have all done better when a time is assigned to do them. I've done less well with house upgrades.  They just don't have the same priority as my health and mind, but they are reasonably finite tasks, though large ones.  I follow a timer, just don't show the same performance consistency that I have with other personal semi-annual initiatives.  No barrier to adding these to tasks I schedule myself to do.  Small consistent performance.  Large projects progress to completion.