mistressofmuses | Habit Tracking: Week 32 ( August 07

Cute beetle washi tape! I've used this decoration/color scheme before, but we saw lots of cute bugs on Monday. :)

This was a... mixed week. I feel like I say that about a lot of them. But my days off at the beginning of the week were very nice, but I struggled quite a bit at work. I spent a lot of the week kind of tired and cranky in a way I don't enjoy being, and also had a hard time staying focused. Writing was okay, and I got a few things done that I'd meant to, but spent a lot of the week feeling very deeply fatigued. (I wonder if it's a holdover from having had Covid in June. Most of the physical exhaustion passed, but the mental stuff is very present. I just can't tell if it's truly worse than things were before that or not.)

Goals for the week:
- I did write more than 5000 words on Outbreak
- I did not read any more of Seasonal Fears. I'm frustrated that I lost all momentum on it.
- Also failed to put my laundry away.
- I did ask about (and then made a post about) the Set Sail zine.
- I cleaned up the floor
- I sat down and read through the bios/Q&As/candidate chats for all of the OTW board members that were running this year
- And I voted in the board election! (And wound up happy with the election results, too.) Hooray for ranked voting!

Tracked habits:
- Work - 5/7
- Household Maintenance - 1/7
- Physical Activity - 2/7, visiting a local park and the greenbelt
- Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 1/7, writing over 500 words about that trip to the greenbelt*
- Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 5/7, all over 1000 words
- Meta Work - 6/7
- Personal Writing - 7/7
- Other Creative Things - 3/7
- Reading - 7/7, pretty much all fic
- Attention to Media - 6/7; Continued watching Hulu's "Into the Dark" series on Sunday with They Come Knocking, All That We Destroy, and I'm Just F*cking With You. All three were... okay, but could have maybe done more with their themes. On Monday, we watched the last two of the series we hadn't seen: Treehouse, which similarly had a decent premise that fell very slightly flat, and The Body, which I thought was pretty good. On Tuesday I watched the first two episodes of The Sandman and very much enjoyed it. Friday we watched Prey which really was pretty good. And on Saturday we watched Horror in the High Desert which was one of the better faux-documentary horror movies I've seen in a while.
- Video Games - 0/7
- Social Interaction - 7/7

Total Words Written: 8617 (7679 on Outbreak, and 938 on that post about the greenbelt.)

*I'm very inconsistent about counting words on entries here toward my general wordcount. Mostly no, but if it's a post where I go through a couple edits to try and really convey something specific (in this case, a kind of "walk along" summary), then I will. It's pretty much entirely based on whether it *felt* like I was working on writing as opposed to just making a journal entry.

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I love the beetle tape!!

Also I enjoy these weekly pages you post. How did you get started habit tracking? I have a tendency to throw myself all in on a system and get burned out on the details. How do you choose to prioritize somethign with daily boxes vs putting on your goal list?

Thank you! I got the tape as part of a "Halloween" themed set a few years ago, and I love it.

I had... several attempts and failures at habit tracking over the last few years. I started because I got a fancy-for-me notebook as a gift, and wanted to find *something* to do with it. I'd also seen a couple people (VE Schwab was one, I can't remember the others) doing various types of tracking.
At the same time, I'd reached a point in having a "real job" where I was really struggling with feeling like I did nothing else; I wasn't writing, but I wasn't doing *anything* it felt like. So it started as a way to see where I was spending my time, then I added in some things that I *wanted* to spend my time on.

I only made it a month or so the first time, and I think even less time on try two. I've adjusted the individual habits a couple times, because I really had to make sure it was positive. No tracking anything negative, or that's going to make me feel guilty for doing it.

I picked the habits to represent the vast majority of what I spend my time doing, since it started as mostly tracking where my time was going. Then I split things out more, particularly with writing, because journalling on DW and writing on a piece of fiction are different to me. This year I also split writing on a first draft and rewriting subsequent drafts, just because I was curious to see how they differ for me.

The goals are more specific than the general habits, though they generally fall under one of the habit categories. So "writing" is a habit, but "write 5000 words on xyz project" is a goal. "Household maintenance" is anything that relates to housework, but "do laundry" is a goal. (If applicable, I check a goal off with the same color as the habit is for the week.)

In part I've managed to stick with it because the whole thing has helped with my "probable" (but almost certain) ADHD:
- I get a definite little surge of satisfaction when I get to check things off of a list, so filling in a little box for each thing I did in a day is great!
- I'm terrible at remembering things I need to do, so having the goal list has saved me *several* times from forgetting to do things that had a time limit/a specific due date
- Another thing I struggle with is that when I'm in a bad emotional spot, or struggling to get things done, I feel like it's *always* been that way. Having the ability to look back and see that no, I haven't been stuck in a rut forever, is helpful.
- It also helps me keep track of long-term stuff, like total wordcounts per month and ultimately the year.

I know that "aesthetic" journaling has gotten a bit of flak lately as coopting the "bullet journal" that is a frequently suggested to help with ADHD, and making it inaccessible for the people it was designed to help. I don't go all-in on making it pretty - last year I only had one color scheme, and the stickers were intermittent. (Honestly, I'd love to do layouts that I actually draw, I just lack the inspiration for it most of the time.) But having nice colors helps me with the little dopamine surge I get from getting to check something off as complete, and picking a nice sticker and some pretty pens is a soothing task to focus on for me.

I managed to track the entirety of last year, and being able to like... hold my year in my hands was pretty cool. It also helped me to look back and see what books I'd read and things like that, so that's been motivation for me to keep it up.

Don't apologize for going into detail, I appreciate it! I'll give it another shot, haha.

Haha, I think it's worth giving another try! The biggest thing for me was just... finding something that worked for me in terms of habits and such, and it took some experimentation to get there. I haven't seen anyone else's who looks quite like mine - it's a lot simpler and more standardized than the super aesthetic ones with very elaborate layouts, but is a lot more decorative than the extremely bare-bones all-function-no-fluff bullet journals.

I also write short blurbs - usually 3-6 lines in the notebook - for each day with a very rough summary of what the day was like or what I did. I'll write down things we watched or stuff I read, the wordcount for the day if applicable, and very short bits about what happened and how I feel, and at the end of the week I write another short blurb about my retrospective feelings on the week.

Follow up question :) I can see you sometimes fill in half a square to mean one benchmark completed, and the full square to mean a further target. You also have some squares lightly shaded instead of fully colored in. What do the lightly shaded squares mean? Do you keep a key somewhere?

I don't really keep a key outside of my head... Maybe I should!
The half-squares are just for wordcounts for me - half a square for 500+ words, and a full square for 1000+. I'll also just trace the border of the square if I did write, but got less than 500 words. (Largely this was because 1000 words is a lot for me, particularly if it's a first draft of something, which is often where I'm the slowest. ONLY getting to fill in the box when I hit that point made it hard to feel like I'd accomplished anything, so "rewarding" even small amounts of progress was more encouraging!)
The squares that I mark with the diagonal stripes/only lightly shade are for days where I feel like I only *kind of* did the thing. Like... if I posted here, so technically I did do "personal writing", but it was only a few lines or a fic link or something. Or for "reading", I'll sometimes use the lighter shading for a day where I tried to read, but didn't get very much done because I was interrupted/couldn't focus. It's a bit of a loose division, and kind of just comes down to how I feel about it on the day.

Habit Tracking: Week 32 ( August 07 - August 13)

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This got really long and rambly, lol. Sorry

Re: This got really long and rambly, lol. Sorry

Re: This got really long and rambly, lol. Sorry

Re: This got really long and rambly, lol. Sorry

Re: This got really long and rambly, lol. Sorry