27: Where are Your Thoughts?

Thinking more on the subject of being behind or ahead has made me realise just how far behind I have been and for how long.

Examples:

Darn there is nothing I can take for lunch. Oh well I will just buy something (going to be nutritionally bad and expensive). 

Yikes I am out of fuel and I have to jump into the traffic. (Stressful and makes you late for work).

What's for dinner? I didn't take anything out of the freezer. Oh well its fish and chips tonight. (Another bad meal and expensive)

We need milk for the morning breakfast. (Late night drive costing time and money).

Tax return is overdue!

I missed paying the power company on time. We lost our early bird discount.

Everyday you have 100s of thoughts that dominate your day. At the end of it, to stop you thinking of the next day, you switch on the tv, grab a wine or a beer, and switch off thinking until morning when the rollercoaster of thoughts sets off again.

Eventually, this thoughy process just becomes part of who you are. You may not even realise that you have the feeling of being behind all the time as it just becomes your new reality and 'who you are'. It's a society norm to be caught up in a constant stream of thoughts. In USA it is common for people to be on medication to control stress. Considering one of the big diseases today is that of the mind, it is no wonder; we are wearing our brains out with the stress of everyday living. Every thought has an affect.

If you were going to live for 300 years you certainly would not want this feeling every day of your life. It becomes part of your daily anxiety. You are always scanning your thoughts trying to work out what you have to do. For many of us we just give up and start releasing the feelings by just accepting chaos is just a fact of life.

The good news is it doesn't have to be this way but what is involved in eliminating it?

I have found that it just requires planning into a spreadsheet and working through the list on a daily basis.

Using the following column headings I plotted over 150 things I had to address each month. It turns out that in my case, if I allocate 3 hours a day to life management tasks, I am going to live constantly ahead of my tasks which means less stress, better nutrition, and a clearer mind. The alternative is to constantly be confused as to what I need to be doing and or accept this mental process as my daily operational norm.

I highly recommend living in the world of being ahead. Make a spreadsheet called 'Tasks' and start lisivng the various chores you meed to address.

1: Category

For analysis its a good idea to categorise Subjects:

Example

Fitness

Home Maintenance

Business

Vehicle Maintenance

Holidays

Work

2: Subject

Subject (>) is the main area of the task.
For example, we have a lot of cleaning tasks at home. So the Subject is Home.

Subject Examples:

• Home
• Office
• Car
• Personal
• Accounts
• Holidays
• Entertainment

3: Area

An Area is the focus of attention

Example:
SUBJECT - HOME
 > Area 1  > Lounge
 > Area 2  > Kitchen
 > Area 3  > Bedroom

CAR
 > Clean
 > Maintain

MOTORBIKE
 > Clean
 > Maintain

ACCOUNTS
 > File receipts
 > Cash Book Update
 > Review Budget

3: Task

A task (>>) is a further breakdown of an Area.

ACCOUNTS

 > File receipts
    >> Collect receipts
    >> Separate into relevance
    >> Enter into cash book
 > Cash Book Update
    >> Import bank statements
    >> Review Cash Account
 > Review Budget
    >> Does any part of the budget need updating?
    >> Are we still on target?

4: Frequency

How often does the task need attending?

5: Expected Time

How many minutes do you expect the Task to take?

6; Allocation

The Task may be allocated to someone other than yourself

7: Actual Time

How many minutes did it actually take?

8: Dates

There are two dates:

Date last done

Date next due

Manually calcukate this or use formulae.

Listing Tasks

Use a logical approach to listing tasks.

Don't worry if you dont get everything as you can always add to the list.

How To Use

With tasks loaded, pick a date you want to address the task. Some tasks repeat daily like cooking, dishes, tidying up. Other tasks happen strategically through the week like shopping. Where as some tasks happen once a month like cleaning the car. I create 31 columns to represent each day of the month, and then plot what I got to do copying the estimated minutes to the relevant column. Then I total the column to give me the relevant number of minutes.

Update 10/11/2019

I have been following my spreadsheet for about a week now and it is a totally different world. I can't fully explain it but there is a weird feeling, like something is missing. It's the stress. I now have a more solid foundation and a feeling I have not know before is my companion. It's a good feeling.

I decided to use this wet Sunday to build a mockup application to do this planning and management of tasks.