2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 32: The Power of Breaks

Last week was productive, but it required a lot of maintenance, and I had to be fairly single-minded with my focus, which means that I didn’t get any writing done — only organizing.  But that’s the biggest priority right now, to be ready for my mom coming here during her recovery, so that’s okay.

I think one of the biggest reasons I was so successful last week was that I took a lot of breaks.  It wasn’t a rigid Pomodoro approach, as there were no timers, but whenever I achieved a small task or felt like I was getting to a point of overwhelm, I took a break and regrouped.  It allowed me to keep moving forward all week long.

Unfortunately, it was also extremely exhausting to be pushing myself so much, and by the end of the week I could feel that I was struggling to maintain my energy levels.  I also found I was capable of many fewer focus sections by the end of the week.  Perhaps if I’d had the entire weekend to rest and recoup, I’d have been able to come back feeling refreshed today, but I had a restringing class at the museum yesterday and as a result, was “on” for the most of the weekend, too.

Today, unfortunately, the focus sessions and breaks are not working.  It could be that I’m still exhausted from last week and the lack of break since yesterday was a big day, or it could be that this is my period week, and I’ve consistently found through the last few months of tracking that my energy and focus levels take a nose dive during the week of blank pills.

Regardless of the reason, my focus is in the toilet today, and it has taken me two and a half hours (and counting!) to get this far in my blog post.  And only now, at nearly 6pm, do I finally feel any degree of focus.

Last week was good, though, so let’s focus on that.  You can find out next Monday how I managed to deal with this week’s lack of focus.

Writing

I was so focused on decluttering, organizing, and cleaning last week that I got nothing done on my novel.  I did get my blog post and Instagram post up, but not until Thursday.  I also got some minor work done on my ADHD planner, which I’m kinda halfway counting toward my writing goals.  I’m working on making small tweaks and revisions now as I use it and discover what works best.

Decluttering and Organization

This is where essentially all of my productivity last week was centered.  I started cleaning up the kitchen and made a ton of progress there.  I also made major progress organizing in the doll room.  I’m working on organizing the collections of all the “named” dolls, and then I’ll move on to reorganizing the non-collection clothes and accessories so that I can start putting things away from around the house.

Dolls

Ironically, despite my restringing class, I didn’t get any of my own doll projects done.  The doll I restrung as my demo was the museum’s doll.  So I’m not sure if that really counts toward my goal… but I guess it isn’t a significant issue at the moment, since I need to prioritize getting the house ready for my mom’s stay.

Taxes

No progress here, but I fully expect that to be the case for a few more weeks.

Lessons Learned

I’m hoping that my use of breaks will be a lasting technique that I can use to power through other tasks, although of course I’m hoping that I don’t have to power through every time.  I’m a little worried since it’s been so ineffective today, although as I mentioned, there are a few possible reasons why that could be the case.  I’ll keep trying, though, and report back next week.  I still have lots to get done this week!

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 31: Creating Is Motivating

Last week was a strange week, but it reinforced the idea that when I create more, I am more motivated.  So while on paper it’s going to look like I missed the mark with a lot of my goals, it felt like a pretty productive week.

On Monday, I was getting ready to work when I got hugely derailed by an idea for a new project — not a writing project, per se, but an idea to create an ADHD planner.  I’ve come to suspect that I have undiagnosed ADHD (more on that in a future post), and I’ve had ADHD planners recommended to me — but when I look at the ones available, I never see anything that quite meets my needs.

So I started thinking about what I might find useful, and with that, I was off to the races.  I started designing mine in Canva (and realized when I did so that most of the ones you see for sale are just Canva templates with “ADHD” slapped on them).  Most of the day Monday and Tuesday was spent on this, and in the end I think I came up with a planner page template that suits my needs much better.  I also have ideas for other planner pages that could potentially be combined into a comprehensive, hyperlinked planner with the same goals in mind.

A few Facebook friends voiced interest when I posted on social media on Monday about my day, and I ended up creating a Facebook group for the purpose of finishing and beta testing the planner template.

It’s not a writing goal, per se, though in a way it’s in the same category.  I’m leaving it out of the writing category goals, even though I do intend to keep working on it.

Here is the rundown for the rest:

Writing

On the subject of being more motivated and productive when I create more, on Wednesday — after two days in a row of intense focus on my planner project — I had a sudden idea for a short story.  Without thinking about it too hard, I immediately wrote the story.  The result was that I spent about three hours writing a little over 4,000 words, and I love the story.  It’s one I hope to do something with eventually.  I’m going to sit on it a little, then revise and polish it a bit.  It might be a good freebie when I start self-publishing.

This gave me one of my two days of writing last week.  Even though it wasn’t on my novel, I’m happy for the burst of motivation and the lesson that following my focus and creating, even when it’s not something that’s on my to-do list, both energizes and motivates me.

Decluttering and Organization

My goals in this particular category kicked into high gear last week when I discovered my mom will need surgery again soon — this time, the other hip.  Last February she had her first hip replacement surgery and spent a month at my house, recovering.  I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare before that one, either — maybe even less — which made cleaning and organizing for her pretty tough, plus I got sick right beforehand and that meant I had even less time.

Hopefully before this surgery, I’ll have more time to organize and truly get everything in order.  I have a lot of stuff in my living room that is to be fixed up and/or resold, so I may need to consider storing it somewhere until after she has recovered.  I hate to pay for a storage unit, but if I don’t, I’ll have to depend on other people’s kindness and hope someone will let me take over a corner of their basement or something.

One thing at a time, though — I have at least five weeks and a lot of organizing to do before I need to make that decision.

Dolls

No progress here and I don’t expect a lot over the coming weeks, since I’ll be more focused on decluttering, organizing, and cleaning — and after that, taking care of my mom.

Taxes

No progress here either, and I expect this one to be tabled for a little while as well.

Lessons Learned

I feel like there are two lessons to be had here:

1. Creating is a motivating activity for me.  Theoretically, if I follow my creative urges around more often, I could potentially have all the motivation I need — but I do suspect that I would crash at some point from doing too much.
2. Life doesn’t just give you lemons, it wings them at you like they’re fast balls.  Forget the lemonade!  If you’re lucky, you can hit them out of the park.

This post is going up late too, obviously, and I’m happy to say that, like last week, it means that I’ve been productive.  I actually started this post on Monday but I’m just getting around to finishing it!  That’s also partly because I’ve also been pretty distracted all week, despite being actually rather productive.

Exciting things to blog about next week, but… I’ll leave that for next week’s post.