another week another gain

Blurgh inspite of my good intentions, a combination of London and TOTM has given me a gain of 3 lb this week. Oh well at least I will be mainly at home for the next few weeks so can get back to trying to learn how to eat like a normal person.

And Friday wouldn't be Friday without my GTD review. In some ways I find the weekly review the hardest part (well apart from actually doing the work) and am still playing around with how I do it. At the moment I

• make a cup of tea
• process anything outstanding in my in-tray
• pull out all my @action files and my project files, open up my email folders and 43things
• get out last week's project/review list
• look at my diary for the week/s ahead
• work through my paper & email folders, checking for things done and things outstanding
• synchronise my main diary (sunbird) with my paper diary and the family calendar
• list my ongoing projects and note the 'next action', highlighting the things I really need to move on in the coming week
• make sure the reminders are put in the proper place in the system - eg putting a bill in my tickler file so it 'pops up' when I need to pay it, noting it on a post-it and sticking it to the right list (eg calls)
  
• put all my folders away again
• have another cup of tea

One thing I know I need to work on is my longer term planning. I'm getting pretty good at next actioning stuff but many projects also needs some work on planning them out. That's something I'm going to work on this week.

And because I know how fascintating all this gtdness is, here are some photos to go with it:



More stationery news: I am currently in love with the Paperchase's stripey range.

on not getting things done

Well my widgets remain beautifully organised but unfortunately somewhat uncranked. I have several projects that I keep pushing back and pushing back. I need to get them moving else I will be in serious trouble but seem unable to overcome my ostrich-itis about them. These are not things that will take a seriously long time, but they are things I have allowed myself to become scared of.

Doing my weekly gtd review has helped a bit. I have realised that I have progressed many things well, so I am not in fact a total failure. I am hoping this perspective will help get me over the hump and back cranking my widgets come Monday morning. I have re-arranged my working patterns so that instead of smearing my part-time work over a full week, I work only on 3 days a week. I thought this would make it easier to concentrate on doing the right things on the right days - work on work days, study on non-work days. So far it's not working out that well but I will keep going at it.

Weight-wise, I have lost another 1.5 lb this week whoo etc. I have eaten sensibly/normally 5 days out of 7, making a change from bingeing 5 days out of 7. I'm still tracking my food on WW site but not worrying about staying within points - I think I need another few weeks of adjusting back to eating normally before starting to cut back more. Maybe when I stop losing weight, it will be time to try and stick to my points. I've done most of the exercise I aimed for - belly dance and aquarobics but not pilates (not my fault, class was cancelled).


The current cornerstones of my healthy(er) eating are smoothies (the lazy girl's way to eat fruit, whizzed up with low fat pro-biotic yoghurt & sugar-free cranberry juice), houmous (home made, way nicer than shop bought houmous which is often foul) , pitta bread (to eat houmous with)p & oatcakes. I am trying to be organised - making a batch of houmous at the weekend, and when I make smoothies I make enough for 2 or 3 at a time, not running out of itta bread or oatcakes, that kind of thing.

Next week is a bit worrying - me & O are having a half-term trip to That London and will mostly be eating out. I need to think about how I can handle that sensibly.

weekly review

oh not more gtd dronings? Yep, fraid so. The weekly review is a key gtd thing, and a generally good idea. So I'm hoping planning to do it each Friday, which ties in nicely with my weighing myself schedule too, then I can review my eating and WL week at the same time. I've dusted down my 43 things list to use as a collection bucket for some of my personal projects (particularly those of the 'someday/maybe' variety), and gone through adding next actions to the things I want to move on (oh and put it in my side bar too hurrah for java script thingummies). Then I've dropped those next actions into my @actions system and made folders for the projects that need them.

I haven't weighed myself today, as I only did it a couple of days ago, but Friday will be my regular weighing day. Eating has gone OK the past 3 days, I have been over my points but I'm not that bothered about that for now. The important thing is I have been eating real food (fruit and veg and pulses omg) and drinking water & green tea (instead of 6 cans of Diet Dr Pepper a day). So far, so good, so keep on going. Tomorrow morning I'll have a swim while O has his swimming lesson, I have a bike ride arranged for Sunday and I've arranged to take friend along to belly dancing so I have to stay for 2 hours instead of 1.

And my OU books have started to arrive hurrah!