Tag Archives: Planning

Inspiration to relax

As usual lately I was not sure what to write about, so I asked the people I was with earlier if they could suggest a subject for today’s inspirational post. And the first thing my partner came with was ‘inspiration to relax’ and I think I know why he mentions that as, no matter my planning and such’, often I still spend way too much time ‘at my computer’, even though often it is not purely work.

And yes, I know recently I often kind of skip posts as either I feel I have nothing to share or that it’s relatively late or too late. But while writing now of course that is because somehow I can’t find the time to relax, somehow I forget to plan to relax.

And yes, that is also I noted some time ago, that when I planned an item ‘do something fun’ I really had a hard time to realize, more than with any other item I ever put, related to work and such. And yes, I always state that I don’t make so much difference between ‘work’ and ‘play’. Or actually I don’t make any difference. But yes, I think I focus too much on ‘work’ and ‘success‘. And I don’t put enough time and effort in ‘relax’ and ‘play’.

So let’s plan some more things related to ‘relax’ and ‘play’, even though that is scary to me. But then, fear is the worst enemy and easily conquered with courage. So let’s find some courage next week and really plan relax and play items. And do them.

Late again, but satisfied

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It is late again, but I am pretty satisfied as again I did all the things I planned to do, even though my visit to the city this afternoon lasted much longer than I planned and expected.

And yes, last weekend was a bit chaotic and I skipped one day my daily blog stuff, but I am still human and it didn’t make any sense to me to push myself to really do those daily things when traveling to and from a wedding and attending a wedding, combined with a visit to family.

And yes, Mike, I want to thank you for making clear to me that I am still human and that sometimes it doesn’t make sense to push things that just don’t make sense or hurt people, especially when they are sick for example.

But today I had no excuse but to finish what I planned, and as far as I know right now writing this post is the last thing on my list for today.

So after this I am going to shortly check my planning and see if I really finished everything that I wrote there and then I’ll probably rest a short while, just watch TV or something, and go to bed after.

So good night, or good morning or day or whatever, depending what time it is for you now.

I’m finished.

Planning, again…

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Today was a bit a chaotic day and I had the feeling I didn’t do so much, especially as I was still distracted with my disk problem, even though I kind of planned what to do with that. But unlike before, before I started writing about these things and before I made my daily to-do list and before I started making the bed every day, I realize more and more what is going on and how I could improve my inefficient behavior on a day like today.

As during the day I realized that I was going back again and again to reorganizing the files on my hard disks, something not really needed right now, even though I don’t feel comfortable if I don’t have my backup systems in place and running, if my system is not running smoothly. But somehow today was the first time I realized what is really going on, which also is starting to make it possible to change my behavior, should I want to.

And yes, my main tool right now is my daily to-do list, that is slowly extending to some kind of a life planning with goals and activities and such on a daily or monthly or yearly basis. And I never liked such a thing as it didn’t feel good, it didn’t suit me before. But somehow I have found a way that is starting to suit me, a way to plan my life, plan how I want to live my life, which probably will also give ways to achieve goals, small and big goals, unimaginable goals.

And what I am doing right now might not suit you, as I guess everybody needs to find a way to do things in a way that suit him or her, but I can tell you where I stand now and how I got there.

So where I stand now is that I have a folder with a pile of scratch papers (blank side up) where each of those papers has a date on the top. And the papers now extend to a few weeks ahead plus the ‘end of month’ dates up to the end of 2014. Next to that I have one or a few pages with dates far in the future, where the farthest date is somewhere in 2024 or so.

And how I go there is very simple:

I started making the bed every day, as a daily routine, as something I wanted to finish every day. Next to this I first wrote a daily post in my Dutch blog, something I extended with writing a daily post in this site and with sending a daily quote and keeping a daily gratitude list in the Dutch site.
And I forgot when I started it, but then I started to make a daily to-do list for the current or the next day, just a scratch paper upside down with a date on the top of the blank side, together with one or more items I wanted to finish that day. And the main thing with that daily list, that one paper for one day was that I finished the item on it, no matter what. And it was hard at the time, as at the time I started I was emotionally virtually completely paralyzed, so mostly there was only one or a few very, very simple items.
The somehow I started adding pages a few days ahead, pages I kept together with a paperclip. First just a few days ahead, later one or two weeks ahead. And the hardest part was that I was catching up with the planning sometimes, like I only had one or two days left with to-do items.
So I started planning the item ‘add days to the planning’, where I kind of forced myself to extend my planning. But it was an easy thing to do, as I just fetched some additional scratch papers, added dates on the top of the empty side of the paper and added them together.
Then quite recently I started adding items far in the future, mostly on things other people agreed to do, not my own things. That’s also where my planning page of 2014 comes from. But I’m quite sure I will add the stuff from my desire document, as it has also an item in 2022.
And from this adding items in the future somehow I decided to add pages for one or two months ahead. This also came kind of naturally as I had some pages one or two months ahead and I wanted to have the sequence complete in order not to be confused and mix the whole thing up with duplicate pages.
Then also I started to realize that I could put goals in the pages, goals that I didn’t achieve at first, but as per instruction of Napoleon Hill it gave me opportunity to analyze what was going on and what I could do different if I wanted to.
Then finally I realized my paper clip was not enough to hold the whole bunch of papers together, so I found myself an old hard cover folder where I put my planning a few weeks ago.
So right now I am starting to learn and see what a real planning is, something I never knew how to deal with before, as it felt kind of useless. But that again, that feeling of a planning being useless, probably goes back that I didn’t have a real goal in life, a real definite purpose.

So yes, everything seems to come together. And indeed, the Principles of Success as described in the book Think and Grow Rich seem to make more and more sense to me know and are really helping me living my life, achieving my goals, and maybe more important, making me feel more relaxed with everything, where the last may amaze you.

So what would be my main recommendation if you want to take charge of your life or take better charge of your life?

I think the main keyword is patience as it took me a while to get it all together. And second and third keywords would probably be do and analyze.

What a day

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What a day was today. And it started something like last Friday or Saturday when I found that one of the hard disks in one of my main servers had malfunctioned. And this time it was a major thing as my main development environment was not available, meaning I couldn’t really work on my major project.

So I was very down and my mood was not so good the last few days, but somehow I have already learned something like ‘this too shall pass’ and something like ‘it can and just will be fixed sooner or later’. And what I learned the last few days that by slowly planning and doing the things needed to fix the problem, or actually problems, I slowly moved from a very unstable and not fully working system to a system that is now kind of working with at least a backup system that is working more or less and the major system in the process of being fully restored, probably tomorrow, but certainly somewhere this week.

And what I also learned is that writing about these things helps me, analyzing these things helps me to realize that things are not as bad as they felt when it actually happened. And I also know more and more that it is important to have backup systems, which I always had, but, like now, not fully in place.

But just like with aviation safety, I realize more and more that I do have backup systems in place, and yes, I also realize more and more that things do go wrong, like hard disks just fail every now and then.

So the next thing is to realize that even something like this, a major crash where I indeed lost quite some data, fortunately this time probably only private data, do happen, will happen. And that you just need to be prepared for that. And that I, and probably you, are more prepared than you think. At least if you think a little bit like me.

So next thing is to learn to not be so much affected by a simple, normal failure of a hard disk or something like that. As it is just part of life and if you are prepared for it, it’s not such a major thing. And with some proper planning it’s not even something to be emotionally affected by it, other than see the positive side that it was not as bad as it originally seemed.

But yes, do have safety features in place, as especially with mechanical stuff and such, things do fail, do have some kind of life time.

Empty

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My mind is a bit empty as it was a very busy day as I planned a bit too much. But somehow I still managed to finish everything I planned, even though the start of the day was very emotional, which kind of turned me off.

So nothing really inspirational to say, except that the day ended good and had some nice surprises, including a phone call with someone from a submarine cable company, a company that at first was not that easy to reach. But no, I didn’t get the sixty rejections yet that I often read about when people want something, so maybe I’m lucky by only having to send five or ten e-mails before I get a reply.

And I still don’t get why so many people, so many companies don’t reply to e-mails, as to me that is just courtesy and also something I learned. And often I am wondering if I am so bad in replying to e-mails, but I don’t think so, even though of course sometimes also I don’t reply to e-mails of people that deserve to be replied to.

Anyhow, it is late and it has been a busy day, so I’ll sleep soon. I wish you all a good day or good night, whatever applies to you.