Tackling Projects

Some initiatives are little with no excuse for not doing them.  Each Monday I measure my waist with a tape measure and my weight with an electronic scale, then later in the week record the results and a comment on diet and exercise progress in a bound notebook.  My waist has been static within one-half inch for a few years but I measure it anyway.  My weight varies within a kg for a few years but failure to reduce it and those paragraphs of where I fell short probably helps keep it static when the natural history might be rising.

Some projects are big and have deadlines.  Each month I am contractually committed to present an essay on Endocrinology, submitted the final days of each month without fail.  Approaching the end of the month.  I've chosen a topic and an approach to it, could use some minor research, then write it on time.  I have a deadline for submitting medical expenses for reimbursement.  The process can be tedious but I have the data.  And taxes come due once a year.  My wife has more attention to detail than me.  Once these are done, I have a respite, monthly for my article, annually for taxes and this time forever for health set-asides which disappeared with my retirement last summer. 
Some projects are big and have no deadline.  Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits of Highly Successful People called these Quadrant II initiatives, things that are important, or at least have been assigned importance, but have no deadline, and sometimes no end point.  So my weight reduction goal drags on for each six month interval.  It is important, never achieved, but its pursuit has kept my exercise schedule afloat with some benefits other that weight.  I want to review my finances each month but never have, as I pay an expert to keep up with this.  I will this week now that I have ready access to the data, one of the intermediate steps to this ongoing project.  Each six months I create an initiative for my house.  Remodeling my kitchen got done.  Now I am making a dormant room, intended as our study and later computer room into my retreat.  It has a deadline, self-imposed with no consequences for failure to meet it, meaning it really has no deadline.  Is it important?  Having my dedicated space probably is more want than need.  Pride of accomplishing something may be what is most important about this project.  It is those Quadrant II's, things that have no deadline like health maintenance, retirement planning, periodic vacations, gratifying hobbies that pay off the most but become subordinate to the urgent. 

Today's to-do list, always far in excess of what I can realistically do, has a lot of Quadrant II's, noted with green highlighter.  It has some urgencies which I do not note with highlighter but don't need to be.  Avoiding the negative consequences of missed deadlines usually does not need a reminder.