October 20   To Do Lists

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I have to admit I’ve not been sticking to any system for organising or managing my tasks for a while. It was pointed out to me that from my post yesterday, it was clear that I set goals way too high for myself and then leave myself constantly feeling like I come up short. Well, yeah. I do that. And somewhere along the line, I stopped celebrating or rewarding the wins.

Which is true and yet not. I did order myself a very nice lot of fabric which would perhaps amount to several rewards for the last few months and was a few things I’d had my eye on.But it wasn’t a – here this is a reward for getting all this stuff done. I tend to greet the end of tasks by moving onto the next thing.

One thing I have been trying is iDone This. At the end of every day the website emails you and asks you to email it what you did that day. And then it gives you a tick for each day you got stuff done. OK well that bit I find quite hilarious. Because I am entering everything I get done including day job achievements, housework and TPP. It then lists what you entered when you click on each day. You can quickly scan through and see which days were more productive than others, assuming each line item is of equal value.

I’m trying to enter tasks as step by step so say I worked a lot on a book, I don’t write “progressed book”, I write down each step of achievement that led to that. It’s helping me look at things rather than not having achieved the lofty goals but more at what I did actually get done. And if I spent the day at a family commitment, say, then I write that done. Because that’s what I got done and spending time with people who matter should count when you sit down and think, “what the hell did I do with my life?”

But I do need to link that back into more effective list writing and management and also planning. When  I come home from my trip, I’m planning on setting out a year long work plan and to then break that down into various smaller parts. So I will try and enact “big and little reward milestones” as Terri gently pointed out to me today. I should be rewarded for making it partway towards stupidly huge goals. And, I might reward myself just a leetle bit more in the dealers room at WFC. I think that’s probably likely :)

I discovered that the Fat Quarter Shop would happily post my order to the hotel in San Diego instead of to Australia. And whilst I was putting together that order with all the bits and pieces that I’ve had my eye on plus some Christmas fabric as I’ve decided to make some gifts for C’s family this year, I realised I have never received my last order! (The ballet set above.) After I queried, they have been really happy to send me a replacement, in the same postage. Which is really very kind of them. And then tonight, I was hunting round for pics of the fabric I ordered for this post, I found he NYC fabric I had wanted and then couldn’t find later. As I was ogling it, I got an email telling me one of the charm packs I’d ordered was out of stock and not being reordered, would I like to replace it with something else?! Well I got me a yard of this (below)! Though I do quite like others in this design series.

I think I really am itching to get back to sewing. I always panic that if I take too long away from my crafts, I’ll forget all about them. It’s reassuring to know that eventually I come back on my own, because I want to, or need to. I often think about Janet Catherine Berlo who wrote Quilters Lessons: Notes from the Scrap Bag of a Writer and Quilter. She is an academic in art history and suffered a terrible writers block after her mother died. And basically she took up quilting and for a year did nothing but quilted. I don’t have that luxury. But her series of essays are so memorable about how she became entranced with colour play and how some days all she was up for was cutting out material and other days would be a flurry of activity. And how some projects would lie out for months as she’d play around with how they looked before she completed them. All of that is how I’m starting to think I would like to spend my Christmas Holidays.

 



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  • By Ka'ela Ja'el on 20 October 2011 at 6:56 pm

    Love the ballet set. And what great service from them!

  • By AlisaK on 20 October 2011 at 7:06 pm

    yeah me too!! Can’t wait to see it and play with it to make something – don’t know what yet!

    And I can’t believe their service. In the end, they’d already sent me the parcel with that last charm square pack so now I shall think about whether I want the whole bundle of the series for that NY fabric!

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