Reghan Skerry

It’s time to check in on the progress I’ve been making with my work/life reboot.

In general, it hasn’t been a bad week… even if I’ve had a few days in a row that have felt like I completely stalled on all the progress I’d been making. Really, that’s why these regular updates are helpful for me: they make me sit down and think about each of my individual goals, and honestly assess how I’ve been doing. It’s so easy to let a few bad days discourage me (or to get complacent after a few particularly good days), but when I look at the week as a whole… it’s good. I like the progress I’m seeing.

Mostly.

Now. About those individual goals….

Improve the quality of the art I’m consuming, in order to improve the quality of the art I’m creating.
I’m still doing well with this one—I’m actually doing better with this one than I was last week. (I had to finish a couple of the mediocre books I was reading when I made up my mind to do this. They were just good enough that I didn’t want to drop them in the middle of the story. But they’re done now, and I’m on to the genuinely good stuff.)

I still haven’t seen a real improvement in the work itself, but again: right now, I’m outlining one project and waiting for notes on another, so I’m not doing the kind of work where I’d see an improvement. But I do like the way I’ve been thinking about my work lately (there’s gonna be a doozy of a blog post coming up at some point in the near future, and if you’re not subscribed to my newsletter yet, it might be a good time to do so. Just saying), and that’s something.

Find a way to structure my time in order to support my bigger goals (creative and otherwise).
I’m still in the early experimental stage with this. I’ve been trying a few different time-tracking methods (to figure out how I’m using my time now), and reading up on circadian and ultradian rhythms (because why not?).

But the real progress has been due to the weather. As the humidity eases up, I’m slowly reviving my workout and running routines, and that does a lot for my morning routine in general. Maybe it’s a bit counterintuitive—the exercise cuts into my most productive time, sometimes significantly—but I really do find it easier to find my creative flow on the mornings when I’ve worked out or gone for a run.

Develop workflows for writing and photography. And blogging.
Still haven’t done anything with this. I’m going to make this my priority for the next week.

Experiment with productivity and journalling systems, and find something that works for me.
The bullet journal experiment seems to be going ok. I’m keeping things very minimal for now: no complex spreads or trackers, and I’m only adding features as I decide I need them. It means the whole thing’s a bit of a mess for now, but since my goal is to figure out what I actually want in a planner, it’s working for me.

We’ll see if it keeps working in the longer term.

Finish the work on the office.
I’ve been slacking off on my decluttering this week. Just a little, but I do notice the difference.

The problem is that decluttering is boring. It’s going through papers and magazines to make sure there’s nothing I want to keep (there’s almost never anything I want to keep), and until I’m done with this stage of things, I can’t really move forward. Still. It needs to be done, and I’m going to get back to it over the next week.