I'm Not Tackling My Health Projects

Gardener

Registered
I think that many of your actions are either too small or too large.

Too small:

The laundry task looks too complex to me, broken up into excessively small bites. If you want laundry in GTD (and I see nothing wrong with that), you could have a single-action list titled "Home Maintenance". In that, you could have an action, "Do one load of laundry", set to repeat every two days, or whatever the appropriate interval is. Admittedly, this isn't a task that you can do at one sitting, but to me it is simple enough that I'd be comfortable making it one action. If I did find myself repeatedly forgetting the laundry and coming back to a load of mildewed clothes, I might set an alarm on my phone as part of the "wash" task, to remind me to come back and dry.

Similarly, if you have at least two sets of sheets, you could have a Home Maintenance task called "Change sheets", repeating every week. "Change sheets" would be an action where you strip off the old sheets, make the bed with the clean ones, and put the dirty ones in the laundry. Then, compliance with "Do one load of laundry" will probably cause a fresh set of sheets to be available next time "change sheets" rolls around.

Similarly, you could have a Personal Maintenance single-action list, where you add repeating actions to remind yourself to trim your nails, and so on.

Too large:

"Get massages at massage parlor" doesn't look to me like a single action, but instead a project - I'd retitle it "develop a habit of getting monthly massages". (Or whatever interval you had in mind.) If I were developing a habit, I would break the steps up, maybe something like:

Action: Spend thirty minutes identifying someone to ask for a recommended massage provider, and calling or visiting them to ask the question. Repeat every three days until I have at least one likely candidate.
Action: Schedule a massage with the most likely candidate.
Action: After massage, spend ten minutes deciding whether to schedule regular massages, or to seek a different provider.
Action: Write a repeating action to schedule regular massages.

If you get to this point, then you add "Schedule monthly massage" as a repeating monthly action in your Personal Maintenance list. Your project is complete, and now it's become a repeating single action.

I suspect that "Lift weights at north campus" may be the same. I can't tell if it represents a project that could be called "Develop a habit of lifting weights" or if you already have a location, a membership, the needed equipment, the needed knowledge, and a weight lifting routine, and it really just means, "Lift weights for half an hour every Thursday". If it's the first, then you'd work the project until it becomes the repeating single action, similar to the massages example. If it's the second, you could tuck it into a single-action list titled "Exercise Routines".

I do agree that if most of the health items represent projects, not repeating single actions, that it would be better to work them toward the single action state one at a time, rather than trying to work them all at once.

Gardener
 

theilluminated

Registered
HappyDude;87731 said:
Memoir seems very interesting and have been scouring for a program to handle all my documentation for a while. I’ll make sure to look into it after the weekend, after my trip to Beijing.

I also have to tell you, since putting all those Health projects “On-Hold,” my mind has been a lot more relaxed throughout my days. No longer do I have a nagging feeling of knowing I’m not moving closer to my health projects...but rather feel a bit liberated, as if the GTD Health shackles have been taken off, forgetting I myself placed them between my own ankles. Concerning these Health projects, I plan to make one or two active for the remainder of my time here in China...and place the rest back in Someday/Maybe, bringing them back up after I feel comfortable with the 2 projects I’ll make active soon (most likely reading & meditation (Meditation is great here in China)).

Moving On:

Concerning the Weights you’ve mentioned,

1. Squats
2. Inclines
3. Arnold Press
4. Biceps Curl
5. Rollers
6. Twister
7. Kickouts
Tricepspress,

I’m assuming you don’t do all these in every single workout session correct? You’ve explained the weights x reps x sets perfectly though would believe you wouldn’t perform it all in one session, right?

I’m impressed and thankful with your mentioning of your routines. I’d love ti begin to implement some of the tactics you’ve shared however there isn’t really an applicable gym in this city. The only weights i’ve seen are at a local school, though all the equipment has been locked away. Trust me when I say this city is a complete 180* from any city back in America. It’s a miracle we have WiFi (Though we waited for weeks and even saw construction workers digging a hole from a local school to be able to provide us with internet).

I do the whole routine on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And doing them chronologically is important because one exercise is warming up certain muscles for the next exercise. I spend about 45-60 minutes on this each time because there is not much need to warm up for every single exercise. It is a full body workout, and due to the exercises involved you are saving a lot of time and being effective at the same time.

I personally do not use the GTD system to its fullest, I simply do not have a busy enough life to obsess (not meant negatively) about it. I use a lot of the principles to get an overview over my life, but like Merlin Mann said; "IT folks usually have one context, At Computer". Which is basically true to a certain extent. Most of my life is automated to an extent due to my habits, but it has certainly made me think in a more organized fashion. Perhaps I will get even more into it when I have read Making It All Work.

It is my intent to live about 100% within the system, and I am probably around 80-90% there, but this takes time to get used if you haven´t been much organized before. Being one of the people who dislike shackles in any way, my need to take this a little more gradual became apparent. I started to feel constricted and living in OmniFocus too much (being a procrastinator was a big part of that, read "The Now Habit" if you are too), and the feeling I got made me shun away from certain aspects and then return after a week.

Being a perfectionist and having high standards, I had a tendency to think that every thing I learn must be replicated perfectly and when I read everything for the first time I get it. This comes from my school days where everything came easy to me. So when things got more complicated (concerning learning something), I had a much harder time about things and started procrastinating.

The most important thing I have learned so far about that issue is this; Things that takes time to learn and understand are usually the most valuable skills to attain. The muscle in your body that is having the most difficult time doing weights is the one muscle you need to focus on etc. When things get tough, there is a reason behind it and the possibility for personal growth on many levels exist if you transcend the issue at hand.

Memoir is really such a lovely program, I can´t recommend it enough. The other one that I have lately starting using is Chronograph, simply to see how much time I was spending doing stuff on my computer (and other stuff like reading etc). Using Chronograph I could give myself a pat on the back for the times I was doing productive stuff, and my procrastination is fading at a rapid pace now. Having a lot of tricks in my bag I am doing more stuff now than ever!
 
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