Hack It

New year, new planner, right?

I decided to give the "Intelligent Change" planners a try this year and have been using the first of my 4 for a couple weeks now.

I...miss my yearly planner already, because it took less hacking to make it work for me.

While the first few pages of the Intelligent Change planner worked fine, primarily setting up goals and "committing" by making a promise to yourself in the book, I quickly ran into issues with the actual planner, starting with the weekly planning.

The planner automatically assumes that a week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday, making it irksome to use for someone who has a nonstandard week setup. My week starts on Wednesday with blog day and ends on the following Tuesday.

Since blogs require more from me and take place on a single day, they've naturally become the bookmark for the beginning of my work week. "Front load your work at the beginning of the week," or something like that.

That's not too much of an issue though, since I can draw a scribble-y line as a separation marker. Unfortunately, even the daily pages that you fill out have the day of the week printed at the top, starting with...Monday.

Naturally, I cross those out as well and fill in the real day.

Ah, but if only that was the only issue.

With the way my mind works, I don't set intentions very well. "Today's going to be a good day." "I'm going to do my best." Whatever else. To me, the idea is so vague and unhelpful, it could almost do more harm than good. I don't have any interest fantasizing about how the day is going to be, let alone the entire week. My brain works better when reviewing and adapting. So, I changed the silly, "Intention for the Week" line into "This Week's Why for the Most Important Task," because that creates concreteness. I'm no fortune teller, and I'm not going to waste time trying to be one or trying to bend the universe to my will.

"Finish missed ability cards and play with placement," was my most important task for the previous week. Why was it important? Well, I needed to figure out a style that would work for our Sunday campaign session so that the chaos I experienced during the previous session didn't overwhelm me a second time. While it wasn't the most intensive task, it fit outside my normal schedule, meaning I had to create space for that task somewhere, and the why helped with emphasizing its importance.

Ugh, of course they would have a space dedicated to the "Intention for the Day." We had one for the week, why not each and every day, too?

Nope, I'm not dealing with that nonsense. It didn't take me too long to determine a new approach for that section. Once I realized that I was more of a reflector than an anticipator, the idea landed naturally. Besides, using a word that reflects the day flows so naturally into the "Highlight of the Day" section down at the bottom of the page.

As you can also see, I'm not messing with the task tracker either. The time blocks on the right-hand side of the page tell me enough about how much time I spent on a project without me trying to decide, "Okay, I think it's going to take me...uhh...2 hours."

If people are bad at determining how long it's going to take them to do anything, then I'm going to save myself the mental drain and just note when I started and when I stopped on the time block, since the only commitments I write on there beforehand are obligations I can't miss, such as chatting with a friend at 19:00. Everything else gets filled in as I go or from memory at the end of the day.

People aren't productivity machines. The most they really need to know is how long the project they worked on actually took for that day. Setting a target can leave someone, perfectionists especially, feeling like catastrophic failures if they don't meet that arbitrary number.

Oh, how I wish I was done, but the worst of the hacking is yet to come at week's end.

Okay, the Weekly Wins is actually fine, but I borrowed from BestSelf Co and changed it to "3 Biggest Wins" because listing 3 big wins is better than answering, "What's going well?"

You can bet, however, I got rid of the gratitude section. The journal already asks you what you're grateful for every day, so I see little need to beat a dead horse further. Instead, I want to know where the pain points are. That one's not covered in the daily pages whatsoever. If I can name where I struggled, then I can address those pain points in the future. Hopefully.

For the task review, I just liked the more concise "What's left?" question. Not only that, but telling me to recommit to the uncompleted tasks feels counterintuitive. Some tasks shouldn't be recommitted. Some tasks just need to be let go. So I just redacted that statement altogether.

Another piece I borrowed from BestSelf Co was tracking every work day's "Plan to Reality" score and "Win the Day" score, then taking the average of those 5 days. The up arrows indicate that the average was better than the previous week. Down, of course, would indicate the opposite.

What I like about this setup as opposed to just "Rate the day!" that the daily pages use is that it requires you to look at the distinction. Plan to reality suggests that you did everything, no matter how good the day was. You got your blog written. You got your steps in. You got your workout done. You met with your friend for coffee. You met with the marketing director for your product, etc.... But maybe you did all that while nursing a migraine or sinus drainage or sleep deprivation, so you wouldn't say you necessarily "won the day" even if reality matched your plans.

And I absolutely love that distinction. Because the opposite rings true, too. Your plans all may have fallen through, but maybe it was the best goddamn day you've had in a while.

I ignore the "Quarterly Rocks Check-In" section to expand the "Learn and Adapt" section, because really, these sections are too small, and the former feels like it's mostly repeating the "What's Left?" with some minor expansion. At least to me. My partner felt the distinction.

So, I stuck with the system I used for my yearly planner: green is what's working, red is what isn't, and orange is problem solving how to make red into green.

Finally, the People section. I haven't worried about that yet, because I dislike the pressure of having to follow up with others, especially if it's just for personal enjoyment. I use it as a reminder if I have plans to chat with someone the next week, but as of right now I have no need for the line for "Professional" contacts.

While I appreciate how this journal could help systematize someone with a scattered mind and who needs structure, the structure becomes too constraining for someone as comfortable with time management as I am.

That said, if I had just returned from Japan and was in the midst of trying to figure out my rhythm and when the best time of day is for creative work or for physical activity or whatever else, I would have absolutely loved this planner, perhaps even more than I liked the BestSelf one, which I feel is a step closer to "planning freedom."

As it stands, I might have to consider using a yearly planner.

Or designing my own journal.

Other Notable Accomplishments:

• Continuing with card setup experimentation. In the top picture, all the character mats and tokens boxes are laid out to my right, while the actual cards are laid out on the kotatsu table in front of me. I have a cushion-y armrest to my left where my dice box sits because on the end table is where one of the speakers takes up residence during the session. The other speaker rests on the couch further away from me, behind the character mats and boxes. It's organized chaos and I simultaneously love it and hate it. I love it because it works well. I hate it because I want everything to be more compact. Alas, with how many cards Daggerheart utilizes, and how many I've made to cut down on character mat template size, I think I'll have to settle for this, at least for combat scenarios, since that's what most of the cards provide mechanics for.

• Weight is below 160 lbs again now that I'm on my cut.

  • Did a de-load this week because I've felt wiped--timing makes sense when considering menstrual cycle factors. Even the lighter weight I've used has felt...heavy.

  • I did hit 9 reps though for my green-band pull-ups!

• Finished transcribing 122 parts 2 & 3, and I transcribed all of 123. Last week was chaotic with trying to get back into the groove of transcribing sessions.

• Made decent progress with notes summaries using the Purpose AI, but it's not quite where I want it to be. The structure I'm using seems sound, but different kinds of hiccups have been occurring, especially the past couple of days as, I believe, the Purpose Team works to roll out mid-January updates.

Real Talk:

• What systems did you start using because they were perfect for you at the time but then fell off of because they felt too constraining or otherwise? It doesn't have to revolve solely around planning.

• How often do you hack preexisting systems to fit you instead of you trying to fit a rigid system?

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Salad