Calendars, am I right?

Photo by Windows on Unsplash

I recently discovered this wonderful thing called 'calendar'. But what's the great thing about this calendar, apart from telling you what period in time you are in, it also allows us (a.k.a. me, I'm sure there are more aware people out there) to jot down an event or a task we want to do. Isn't that wonderful? So this is what I did this week, I created tasks for myself. Some that I want to do daily, others once or twice a week, others once a month. 

What's great about this system is that it might actually work. I tried all kinds of versions and I discovered that I work better when I set a task to be done some time in the week, not in a definite time slot. It's more open ended, if you will. I also allow myself to not finish a task. That's okay, we all have bad days, or days when we just can't bring ourselves up to do something no matter how small. So I don't beat myself over for missing a task and I'm not punishing myself for not completing it. Unless the punishment is fun.

There are things that I could have easily done three times over if I would have started doing them the first time I thought about them. Like learning a new language. I could have learned five languages. I wasted a lot of time not sticking to it and starting over because I forgot what I learned the first time around. As a result, now I know random foreign words, some I might not even know what they mean, and I have no way of connecting them to form coherent sentences apart from the basic 'My name is [...]' and 'I come from [...]'.

I always get excited when I start learning a new language or start a new goal, then I lose motivation. I need something to push me into doing these things and the notifications I get from my calendar, on my phone that I use countless times a day, might shame me into doing them. If I can't get motivation, yeah, I'll take shame. 

Problem is I am afraid I'll get desensitised, get used to the notifications and won't pay much attention to them. What do I do then? I didn't quite figure it out, there's a big chance I will just sigh and delete all of the following notifications. I need to find a way to deal with this because I am pretty certain it is going to happen. 

Another thing that worries me is about the tasks I set for myself to do daily. Those are mainly study. I am afraid of burnout, but at the same time when learning a new language daily is the best way to go about it if I want any real progress. On the bright side I have countless tools that I can use: YouTube classes, language learning sites, Discord study groups, language study apps, language exercise apps, news in various languages, online radio, podcasts and so many more so I won't fall into monotony. If I don't manage to learn a new language I am the only one to blame. 

The study task is the most challenging for me right now, but the other one I'm a bit worried about is writing. If you look at the sidebar, there's a button for another blog, Written in Lace, that I made to post my stories. Well, I want to get serious about writing and my goal is to write something once a week. Besides the various forum contests and challenges I participate in (oh, I could post those stories too. Interesting). This week I am already behind because I decided to start on Wednesday and my plan is to get a random word on Monday and go from there. By Sunday the story should be posted. Now, what worries me is that I might procrastinate and not do it. I also don't want a punishment, like if I don't write one story one week I have to write two the next because I might feel overwhelmed and it's no fun writing when you are stressed. The piece will be utter shit, pardon my French. I guess I'll see how to deal with that when it happens. 

All the other tasks are a breeze. I've been doing a few of them for a while now and it's going really well so I'm pretty confident. I might or might not add posting on this blog as well, I'll see about that. I probably will post an update about this, though, either if I fail or succeed. 

I don't get many readers on here, but if you stumble across this post, what kind of methods do you use to push yourself into doing stuff? What works for you? Or are you an upstanding, responsible citizen who needs no reminders? Let me know!