How do you schedule your days?

 

I am not a disciplined person.

I believe I have established this already, right? I said in May that I was going to post a sprint every week, and promptly disappeared. I mean, I didn't really disappear. That would be amazing, and I wouldn't be wasting time worrying about measly little things like schedules if I could be invisible! But I didn't manage to get those sprints done every week, and of the ones I did do, most of them did not make it to the blog. 

I have several projects going on, like a DIY kitchen renovation project that morphed into a take-over-the-whole-house project that has still not been completed but at least is giving us room to breath. We have cranberry bogs, and this is prime harvest season, with the added pressure of being in a drought and having to keep pushing down the anxiety of whether we will have enough water to flood the bogs to harvest them or not. I am close enough to the end of the next book that I can see most of the road to the finish line, but still far enough away that I cannot say I'll be finished in the next week or two. I'm helping to wrangle gremlins who are hybrid schooling, with the assorted meltdowns that the week on/week off schedule introduces (on top of the little-girl-world meltdowns that happen because, life). Oh, and I do have a real job, even if thanks to the pandemic my hours have been slashed to just more than occasional.

I wish I was a bullet journal person. I've tried - I have a whole stack of really cool stickers I bought to make myself a more organized and productive person. They are still in the bag I brought them home in. I think I used a page or two. I love the idea, but my brain doesn't work that way.

What my brain can manage, though, is a to-do list. (Hey, this is progress. I was an adult diagnosed with ADD before I learned how to use external tools to help myself stay on track!) When I was working a more stable schedule it was easier to stay on track and I largely didn't have to resort to the list or planner or... I don't believe in living in the past. We have to deal with what is, right? What is, for me, right now, is that I need to stay a bit more focused if I hope to accomplish things. 

So, back to the calendar with the to-do list. And something new I'm going to trial this month: I'm going to block out time for certain categories of jobs. Something like: editing before going in to the real job. Writing after the real job until gremlins come home. Finishing up the DIY projects, or cranberry harvest related chores that can be done with gremlins in tow, or corralling school projects or homework or myriad other gremlin-related things will be done after school until dinner. If there's still incomplete items left on my list, and I still have energy after supper, they may fit in there. 

So, how do you schedule your time? Are you a planner person, or do you go where the wind blows? Do you need the help of external lists, or are you able to keep it all together just in your brain? (Don't you have anything else going on in there?) {Just kidding!}