Weekly Wrap-ups
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I'm gonna make this as quick as I can because I don't want to
belabor the point (as I fear I might have in my previous post
about Monthly Themes).
Simply put: I've finally started revisiting my daily log entries
on a weekly basis and I love it. I can't believe it took me this
long to start doing something truly useful with the log (okay,
yes I can).
It's real simple: on Monday morning, I flip back to the previous
Monday and start listing the interesting/stand-out items from
each day. Having made that list and having just refreshed my
memory for the events of the week, I then write a paragraph
summary.
That's it.
Three conclusions
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1. Wow, a week is longer than I thought. It's surprising how
distant the earliest events feel.
2. I get a lot more done in a week than I thought.
3. A week is a good amount of time to determine if you've been
spending your time the way you want to.
For me, #3 now means that I want to see some progress on my
monthly theme every week. That isn't always happening (for a
variety of reasons, not all bad), and I feel much more aware of
where my time has gone instead.
Synchronicity
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As is so often the case, discovering the utility of the weekly
wrap-up almost immediately led to my encountering the idea in
the wild.
In Episode 399 of the Pen Addict Podcast, host Brad Dowdy
mentioned that he'd come across Warren Ellis' blog (I know Ellis
as a comic book writer, but I guess Dowdy knows him as a writer
for the animated series Castlevania 2017 - ?, which I have not
seen). At any rate, Ellis has a short entry, which I'm about to
quote in full, which resonated strongly with Dowdy and which
also mirrored my thoughts exactly on the subject:
Warren Ellis status February 23, 2020
The day after my birthday, I started keeping a written log
of what I do every day. Even after only a week, it exposes
that even on the days I don't think I've done much, I do a
lot. It's just that slews of emails and AV and document
processing and calls don't feel like the actual work. I need
to remind myself that, these days, it is in fact a big part
of the actual work.
As of today, I have also had to become one of those people
who logs their water intake. I tell you, this
bio-maintenance shit is some bullshit. I should have been
sideloaded into a new body by now.
Kemper Norton just sent me his new record, I'm off --
[1]
https://warrenellis.ltd/status/23feb20/
I love this whole terse entry, but the key sentence here, for
me, is:
Even after only a week, it exposes that even on the days I
don't think I've done much, I do a lot.
Same.
If you're like me and you feel like you're always busy but you
don't feel like you have much to show for it, this is either a
good way to figure out _why_ or to just maybe come to terms with
the things that you _did_ do instead.
It's this one weird trick and the results might surprise you.
Doctors hate it.
(I hope that someday the above Web advertising meme will make
absolutely no sense to a reader of this phlog entry.)
