Time and Commitment Management

After my last OP my plans were put on hold because I have a daughter who was about to start Kindergarten and I needed to save up some money to move somewhere I wanted to live, pay for Gaia U, and take some courses. I moved in with my parents, got a full time job, and spent a year just taking care of my daughter and working. I did manage to read half a dozen books during that time, which are listed in my Annotated Resource Review. I also thought a lot about Regenerative Dynamics and reorganized and renamed the core nodes of the mind map. I think this break was really good for me because it gave me time to process personal and professional issues in a safe environment and take care of myself so I was ready to re-start with full force.

At the end of that year my daughter's father took her to live with him at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado. I jumped on this opportunity to move to Colorado and resume my degree pathway with Gaia U. I transferred my job at Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage to the location in Boulder and moved at the beginning of September, not knowing where I was going to live. Even though I was moving around a lot I was so excited about working on my projects again that I got an incredible amount done the first couple months. My work slowed down a little in the third month when I began to spend more time with friends, but having the deadline of turning in my OP3 has motivated me to get a lot done in the last week of November. I also have an online Sociocracy course which I have begun to get behind in, but I have a three day weekend after Thanksgiving, so I hope to get caught up with everything.

I have been utilizing the kanban board that I created at ELL last year as a background on my computer. Luckily I was able to find a sticky-note app for Ubuntu that works with it since I switched from Windows. Recently I added time estimations to the sticky notes because I was feeling overwhelmed by big next steps and wanted a way to weigh them, see if they need to be broken down further, and be able to schedule them in time slots where I have enough time to complete them. I have also been recording the time spent in a "Done" spreadsheet so I know what I have accomplished and how much time I have spent. I record the "Done" items in the spreadsheet about once a week.

I have come to fully accept the Pareto Principle and I am relaxing as much as possible except for the 2-3 hours a day when I plow through as much work as possible. Another thing I have realized is that I need to only put things in the "Doing" column that I can easily visualize completing and am excited about getting done. If I have an aversion to doing something I need to think about where that aversion is coming from and address it before putting it in the "Doing" column or it will just stop me from getting anything done at all. This system has been working well for me, and coupling it with Google Calendar ensures that everything I am doing is recorded and scheduled realistically.

OP3 Regenerative Dynamics

Process Reflections

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