The Snowflake Chronicles

My To Do List

13 Jalal 164 B.E. – Saturday, April 21, 2007

I have a daily To Do List. Some things I get accomplish that day and something I don’t. I’m thinking of changing it and not putting on the stuff I have to do everyday come hell or high water. I’ll just put the stuff on it that I don’t do on a regular basis or am attempting to get done regularly, but don’t or can’t. Stuff that I’m building a habit of doing on a daily basis.

I’ve heard it takes about either seven, fourteen or nineteen days to build a new habit. I’ve been putting the chore of updating my spy protection once a week on the list. This helps me remember to up date that. Today I added the virus protection to that. The virus protection update automatically once every thirty days, however once a week is better. I have the virus detection program running three times a week automatically, so I don’t have to worry about that (unless I have the computer off when it’s supposed to run). The other four days I run the spy ware programs. I have to run those manually because they don’t start automatically.

Other things on my To Do List are reviews on writing.com (I’m attempting to build this daily habit). There are writing goals, projects, and housework done on a weekly or monthly basis. I don’t put laundry on there any more because laundry is a daily chore. When I was growing up both my mother and grandmother did laundry only once a week. When we lived in the apartments, we did laundry only once a week. In the apartments the laundry room was not convenient, but when I was a child both my mother and grandmother had laundry rooms with washers in them (they hung the cloths on the line to dry). Living in this house, we do one or two loads, sometimes more, of laundry everyday. I know we’re not any dirtier than when I was a child. So what’s with the daily laundry?

I’ve also put writing project and goals on the list. This is so that I know if I achieve the daily word count. I’m using an excel worksheet to keep track of the daily word count and writing.com gps I have.

One of the items I’m going to have to put on the list is to Unclutter my e-mail boxes, my living space and my work area; although lately my work area and my living space seem to be identical. I’m putting in a system to keep my writings accessible. Right now clutter seems to be my biggest problem, but it’s going to take a while to Unclutter everything.

The To Do List is really good for keeping track of stuff I’m writing for contest, publication and rewriting. Also it works good if I put any weekly or monthly appointments. I suppose I could use pen and paper date book/calendar for the appointments, but I haven’t used anything like that fore ages and ages, i.e. this century. Another advantage to this list, is it helps me to focus on achieving my goals. If a chore, project or items is on the To Do List I can’t put it off forever. The list assist in overcoming procrastination, I think I’ll be working on overcoming this for the rest of my life.

In addition to the To Do List I’ve created a Sixty things to do in my 6th decade list. Things that I want to do before I either get too old to do them or whatever.