Go Big or Go Bust: Day 175 (on impulse control and self-help junkies)

For a self-help junkie who's short on impulse control and frantic to accomplish something BIG, I have manna from heaven.  

About a month ago, Victoria Trestrail, a genius singer-songwriter (whose music you've heard over the credits in all three seasons of The Louise Log), sent me an audiobook. Not being from the big techies, it took me until two days ago to overcome my anxiety and follow Victoria's step-by-step instructions on how to download it. 

The morning after my post about the Lesson from the Lettuce, I started listening to this audiobook, The Power of Less.  And it's total synchronicity!  This book is all about doing more by doing less - just like my tiny lettuce which, when given the space, grew from a couple of small leaves to be bigger than my head.  For the part of deciding how to spend your time and energy, Leo Babauta, the author, takes my rather thin explanation ("decide what must be done today") and lays out precisely how to determine what is essential and how to work backwards to make up daily actions.  It all has to do with what you want, with what your goals are.  Or, with recognizing that you don't have goals and figuring out what they might be. 

For an anxiety-puncturer, it's as good as a day at the beach.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 173 (a lesson in less-is-more from the garden)

I'm not sure if you've been paying close attention but I recently thinned out the lettuce.  Well, in fact, I only thinned out some of the lettuce, not because I've nailed balance in life but because the garden is only so big and there were no more empty rows to transplant to. 

I hardly made a dent in thinning out the row. 

I'm working on *time management* and *impulse control* so that I might experience the luxury of not being jammed up and constantly rushing.  This means fighting my tendency to the all-or-nothing in planting, in scheduling and in basically every area of my life.   

In the old days, I'd be on twitter for fifteen hours straight or packing so many different things into a day that the only possible outcome would be to be anxious, behind schedule by 10 AM and feeling (if not actually) inadequate. 

With my new discipline, I make up a list of what I'd (unrealistically) like to accomplish today. (If you wanted a visual image of this list, look to the hedge of lettuce, above). 

Next, with a cold heart, I put a star beside only what must get done today.  An image for the starred jobs might be the heads of lettuce which I transplanted to another row.  Usually it's only the starred things which get transferred to an 8 x 11 piece of paper and assigned to one or more thirty minute blocks.  This is not an easy moment as the fraction of what I want to accomplish which makes it onto this schedule feels paltry, it feels like what I should knock off before lunch.  But day after day, it's turning out to be pretty much all that I can actually accomplish in a day.  I seem to remember that the recommended eighteen inches between heads of lettuce also seemed like a crazy waste of space. 

I'm taking inspiration and hope from the example of the transplanted lettuce.

Look at the ones (on the right) which were transplanted out of the row and given enough room.  And look at the poor little lettuce on the left (in my right hand) which is jammed up and still suffering from the gardener's 'too much ain't enough' mentality. 

Both pictures were taken today.   All lettuce was planted at the same time.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 93 (on planning ... when you have no impulse control)

I'm impulsive.  In fact, I don't think I have any impulse control whatsoever.  As a child I spent most of my time eating, sleeping or in a frenzy of activity.  Where's Anne?  Oh she's either tearing down the (steep, gravel) driveway on her bike, walking on her hands or running around in circles.  You don't break your nose three times before the age of sixteen reading in a comfortable chair.

So to counteract this tendency to a headlong assault (in no particular direction) on life, I've become a maniac for lists and a schedule.  Not that this comes easily... just last night as I sat down to try and plan out the next few weeks, a familiar wave of panic overwhelmed me.  Every job on my list looks urgent.  Every job is SCREAMING to get scheduled tomorrow. Trying to prioritize feels like what I imagine it's like to be strangled.  Cursing as I went, I blacked out travel days on the wall calendar.  There's no time for travel with all I have to get done!

And then, this morning, something very surprising happened.  Blacking out the travel days indeed limited my time but it also brought things more into focus.  Rage gave way to relief.  And rejoicing in this sense of relief, I realized that the guilt I've been suppressing, for not getting around to a job for a friend, can be a tool too.  That job for the friend went to the top of the list if only so I can get rid of the guilt.  Suddenly the dizzyingly capacious void of time stretching out ahead of me has been chopped down to a much more manageable number of days.  Who could imagine that paying attention to feelings could help to schedule your life?  Here that's what I thought was my downfall!