Building Rome: My First Day

Image courtesy of 89studio / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After weeks of watching people make posts on this Building Rome theme (hosted by Green Embers), I’ve decided to dip my toe and try it. I chose today because I was particularly inspired by this week’s posts from Mental Mama and Not a Punk Rocker. The main idea is to have a place for goal setting and accountability. So today, because it’s my first time, I will post a set of goals that I want to accomplish this week. Then, next week, I’ll report my progress on those goals and post my goals for the new week. I know firsthand that this kind of accountability system works because I was part of a similar group with three other women located in various parts of the US. We did ours by email, and our weekly “check-in day” was Tuesday. We kept at it for about six months, and we all found that we were much more productive when we were using such a system. I’ve even tried to recreate it a could times–without success. So, after several weeks of hemming and hawing about joining this adventure, here I am. Since one of my goals is to have more time for writing and quilting, I want to reduce my working hours to 20, at least for the rest of the summer. But I want to those twenty hours to be focused and productive. My hope is that I can accomplish as much in those twenty hours as I normally would by working longer hours by being more intentional during those 20 hours. To that end, I am setting up four one-hour blocks for each workday. I then make a general task list for those 2o hours, i.e. what I need to get done this week, and estimate how many of these “blocks” it will take to accomplish each task. Maybe it’s crazy, but I’m going to give it a try. I’ve been trying it for two days so far, with great results on Day 1 and less spectacular results on Day 2. BUT I still got more done on Day 2 than  I would have otherwise. I suspect it’s because it’s easier to tell myself, “Just focus for an hour. Then you can take a break.”  mmmmmmmmmmmm coffee! Part of the reason I told you all of that is that my goals are going to focus on blocks of time and more general names for some of my projects. I realized that part of the reason I didn’t join sooner is I didn’t want to post some of the specific things I’m working on, so now I have a solution for that issue. So now that I’ve bored you to tears, here are my goals for the week.

GOALS FOR THE WEEK of July 8

1.  Complete 18 one-hour blocks.  The tasks for those blocks include:

• an editing project
• writing project
• completing a project spreadsheet
• preparing for fall classes

2.  Maintain walking three times this week (in spite of the heat).

3.  Complete Step 2 of the Mystery Quilt Challenge.

4.  Visit more of my fellow builders, now that I’ve jumped into the fray.

5.  Make a plan for my blog.

There you have it. I feel more accountable already.  🙂   If you’d like to play along, you can join in here:  http://greenembers.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/building-rome-week-28-silver-napkins/