As my birthday present to myself, I am giving me at least day each week between now and then to turn this site from an occasionally visited side project to the awesomely helpful site I know it could be.

If you knew me in real life (and some of you do), you’d know that I’m a ’4 in the morning friend’ – you know, the type of person you could call for help at 4 in the morning.

Obviously, I can’t do that for everyone all the time, and there are a lot of different 4 in the mornings every day, so I need a better system.

I’m going to have posts here about what to do when a 4 in the morning worry strikes you. And I’m going to offer 4 in the morning type help – encouragement, empathy and enthusiasm – so you can take more control of your life and stop letting all sorts of annoying, upsetting thoughts derail you.

If you are reading this thinking ‘what the hell is she talking about?’ or ‘why did she just say hell? that was unnecessary!’, I’m probably not your go-to-dame. But if you read the sentence above and let that breath you’ve been holding out a little, then I probably have something to offer you.

As I’m working on this, I’ll post some tidbits of helpfulness. The bigger stuff will be ready on November 10.

Now, take three deep breaths, do a few stretches, and be kind to yourself. I’ll see you soon.

“Only lately?” you might ask, and I frown because that’s unkind.  So, let me just say it is worse than normal.

The problem is my juggling act is getting worse.  I have a giant client project* I am working on at the moment but I have a whole bunch of little things for other projects that need to get done and because of the gears problem I mentioned yesterday, I keep blustering ahead on the big project and leaving the little things in low gear (or no gear).

When someone asks about the low gear things, I pick a time that seems reasonable (but has no relation to the amount of work I have to accomplish in the meantime) and say I’ll have the task done by then. Then I go about my business until I remember that task at the last minute and scramble to do it.

See? Crazymaking, no?

But the good news is, I have a plan.

I’m going to start carrying a notebook with me at all times and whenever I think of something I have to do (or someone asks me to do something) I’m going to add it to the list…

“Sure,” you say, “but that’s no improvement.”

That’s when I chide you for your impatience (chide is a great word, no?) and you realize you didn’t let me finish.

I’m going to add it to the list but, BUT, I am not going to commit to a time. The time commitment will have to wait until I get a chance to look at my calendar, see my work time and pick I time I can fit it in.

So here’s the plan

1) find the proper (pocket) notebook

2) create running list

3) when a new to do comes up,  add it to the list but do NOT agree to a time

4) pick a time each day to add to dos to work schedule, cross them off the notebook list as they are added to the schedule

5) email/phone people to tell them when stuff will be ready

6) do the stuff when scheduled

7) feel less overwhelmed

So that’s the plan for this part of the problem. I need a whole different plan for scheduling my work time, but let’s take this one step at a time, hey?

*to clarify, the project is giant, the client is average-size.

Prompt: 11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?  Prompt by Sam Davidson author of 50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need

Eleven things I don’t need, huh?  In no particularly order:

1. hassle

2. household clutter

3. guilt

4. emotional clutter

5. tiredness

6. junk food

7. bickering children

8. leftovers (stuff hanging around unfinished, not just food)

9. inconsistency

10. those old computers in the basement

11. toys the boys have outgrown

Okay, so those first nine are a little different than the last two but they are all valid, so I’m running with it.

I  love this prompt.  I got up this morning and thought about my to do list for today and then thought ‘To hell with it!  I don’t want to spend my whole day getting the house ready for Christmas and not have any pre-Christmas fun.’  This prompt ties right into that liberating thought.  I am ditching the guilt and embracing the fun of Christmas prep, instead of saving the fun for after the work.  I’m starting elimination of things on this list NOW, damn it! Whoot!

Ahem.

So how am I going to go about eliminating these things?

As for today, I am going to do some tidying – while blasting music and hanging with my kids – but I am also going to make some gingerbread with the boys and help them finish the Christmas cards.  And we are going to go for a walk in the snow.  Take that ‘work first, play later’ attitude!

As for my 2011 plan, I’m going to treat the list in groups.

Group 1: hassle, guilt, emotional clutter, tiredness, bickering children, leftovers, inconsistency,

These things all grow from the same seed, the same thing I identified in my first Reverb10 post.  I don’t set good boundaries in my life, I don’t have structure.  Without structure everything seems important all the time and my life is all about reacting to external things.

I’ve been re-reading Chip and Dan Heath’s book Switch: How to change things when change is hard and making notes about how to make it easier for me to adopt the structure(s) I have in mind.

Basically I know I have to make it easy and habitual to follow the structure by eliminating all the decisions about what should be done when, and I have to make sure not to tire out my will-power.  And I have to identify the things that really matter to me so I can use that identity as a means to automatically make other decisions (i.e.  ‘A self-caring person like me knows it is better to go to sleep when I’m tired than to stay awake reading.’)

When I get this structure in place, and hence eliminate all* of these things I don’t need,  I will  be better able to say no to things I don’t have time or energy for, and I will be building my energy all the time with good self-care habits.  I will have a consisent plan for getting my work done so it doesn’t seep over into other parts of my life, and I will be able to ditch ‘leftovers’ from other sets of past priorities.

Group 2:  junk food

Damn, I hate the way I eat and I hate the way I feed my family.  The structure I discuss above will help me with planning better things to eat, but that’s not the only source of this problem.

I have a lot of trouble with the notion that some foods are ‘bad’ and others good.  Even the ‘worst’ junk food has some nutritional value and I hate how foods come with moral values attached to them.

Yet I know that some food serves my body’s purposes better than others.  Some foods give me energy longer, some foods leave me feeling bad after I eat them.   And I want to feel good, and I want my family to feel good (and to be well fueled) but getting into complicated food rules.

So I am labelling food that doesn’t make us feel good as junk food, and I am going to find the easiest path to keep us eating food that does make us feel good.  And how will my life feel after that?  I can only assume it will feel GOOD.

Group 3: household clutter, those old computers in the basement, toys the boys have outgrown

Some ‘leftovers’ fall into this group as well, but this one is more specific, so I’ll handle this clutter group separately.

I feel bad about the things in this list.  I feel bad because a lot of it represents a type of person I thought I was, or things I thought I’d do with my kids, or stuff I meant to be better at.  And I feel bad about the idea of throwing these things out, so I’d like to find the perfect place to donate them.

I recognize the futility in this line of thinking, yet I haven’t changed it.

If I were to let go of the things that didn’t pan out, I could make so many other things pan out from what I know now, so I need a plan to ditch those old things.

I’m going to use Julie Morgenstern’s SHED principles and pick a time each week to go through some of the old stuff and pick the things I really want to keep and ditch the rest.

I think this is going to feel very freeing as I let go of things I meant to be, so I can decide where to go next.

*I know there is a limit to how much bickering I can eliminate, but I’m thinking of the kind that stems from boredom and lack of movement, not the basic sibling type bickering.

I had a lot of trouble with this one.  I had lots of moments in which I felt very alive but the ones that are most vivid are very private, and sharing them would violate what made them so sharp and intense.

And I don’t think  in terms of favourites, or single-most and I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to pick the very best or just one of the many.  Since I don’t categorize things in a way that would let me distill a single shining moment, I’m just going to pick one that really makes me feel good to think of and run with that.

A Moment

I’m not good with winter, let me say that. I live in Newfoundland where it never gets very, very warm and it never gets very,very cold, but winter is damned chilly and damp and I feel much more inclined to stay inside with a book than to venture outside.

Actually, the only way I can make myself go outdoors is to find a specific thing to do out there and since but I have two boys (6 & 9) who do like to be outdoors I work hard to find reasons to get the whole family outside.  A few years ago Santa brought us all snowshoes to encourage me to have a reason to get out there.  And that brings us to my moment.

One Sunday last February, I huffed and puffed and pushed us all outside with our snowshoes and we trudged to the field by the school near our house.  If this was a fantasy or a movie, the sun would be shining and it would be unseasonably warm and my whole attitude would change at that very moment, but this was real life.

It was really cold, the wind was on my face, and everything smelled sort of sharp, but in a good way, and my boys were thrilled to be tromping around in the snow with me and The Man.  Their faces were red, except for their grins, their mismatched collection of baby and grown-up teeth gleamed at me and they challenged us to a race.

They turned and took off, legs swinging along, their feet giant in yellow and red snow shoes.  My husband and I dashed off after them, doing that parent thing where you put in a real effort while trying not to actually win a race.

My heart was racing, my breaths in were hitting the back of my nose hard and my teeth were getting dry from smiling in the cold air.  My husband was ahead of me and the boys were ahead of me, and being outside in the cold felt good for a change, and I felt like I was doing good things for my kids and myself while I was pushing my muscles just a little.

It all felt REAL and clear, and right and I was inhabiting every part of myself at once, no separate mental track, just the here and now.  And that is so unusual for this overthinker that it stuck with me.

Okay, so it’s a lousy riddle but it’s been a real dilemma for me.

At the moment, I’m trapped in what parents around here refer to as kindergarten hell.  Kids in kindergarten here go to school in the morning (8:45-12) for two weeks and then switch to afternoons (1-3) for two weeks.  So my schedule is a little frustrating.*

I can add almost anything to my day, as long as I can do it at almost the same time each day.  I also work best when I have a couple of hours at time – choppy schedules cause me great stress.

Are you starting to see the shape of my problem here?

My favourite work days are the ones when I can bring both kids to school for 8:45, come home, have breakfast, tidy up a little, catch up with some friends online using my laptop at the kitchen table, drink some tea and then head to my home office to work at 9:30.  I work until 11:30, get lunch started and then pick up The Little Guy from school.

That works really well when he’s in mornings.

But when he’s in afternoons, I bring The Boy to school for 8:45, come home have breakfast, hang out with The Little Guy, do some housework, try to squeeze in a little work between requests from TLG, talk to him endlessly about the fact that this is not actually a day off and that he is going to school this afternoon and no, they won’t have playtime or snacktime because school in short.  Then The Man comes home to lunch,  the three of us eat together and then I bring TLG to school, rush back home, try to work from 1:10 to 2:40, and then head back to school to pick them both up and start the snack/homework/play/make supper part of the day.

So yeah, when he’s in afternoons I don’t get a lot of work done because everything’s so choppy.

I tried to solve that by having my friend K babysit a couple of afternoons each week.  When TLG is in mornings, she babysits from  1-5 (and picks TB up from school). When TLG is in afternoons she picks them both up from school and babysits from 3-5.

That backfired on me because I found it hard to settle and focus in the afternoons.  If I had been working all morning, my brain seemed to think we were done for the day, and if I had been hanging out with TLG all morning my brain was scrambled from five-year-old conversation.

This has been plaguing me for a while (in fact the afternoon problem even predates the kindergarten problem) and I haven’t been able to find a workable solution.

But then last week, I had a great chat with Liz from Dream Garden Coaching and she got me thinking about what made mornings work for me.  Then I enlisted The Man and my friend J to help me brainstorm how to make my afternoons more like my mornings.

And, as usual, a friend could solve my problem when I couldn’t.  J quickly identified the fact that my morning work sessions started with putting my house and my brain in order, and spending a little time by myself NOT working before I started trying to work.

Then we brainstormed ways for me to get that downtime in the afternoons, especially when K is babysitting and she and the kid (or kids) are downstairs and I can’t be alone there.

So, my new afternoon work plan looks like this:

If someone is home:

Have lunch

Take laptop and tea to my bedroom for 15-20m and hang out with online friends

Head to my office to work

If no one is home:

Come back from school run

Have tea and hang out time at kitchen table

Head to my office to work

And THAT’S how I’m going to make my afternoon more like a morning.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

How about you? Does your best work time match your schedule? If not, can you make your scheduled work time feel more like your best work time?

*And that’s before you add in professional development days, one day off per month so the teachers can host the Kinderstart program, parent-teacher meeting days, AND the fact that my older kid goes to school from 8:45-3 each day so I have to go back and forth to the school at least 3 times per day.

Oh, that doesn’t happen that often?  Well, it happened at this one.

This guy, Peter Vidmar, won a gold medal with the US gymnastic team in the 80s and he’s parlayed that into a speaking career.  He seemed like an odd choice to me at first but once he started talking the connections made sense.  Aiming for the Gold, aspiring to excellence,  go business people go!  That sort of thing.

He was funny, charming, and he could swing himself around on the pommel horse like he was born to it.

You know where I’m going with this, right?

He wasn’t born to it.  He PRACTICED. A lot. Way more than it would be practical for a non-Olympian hopeful to practice anything.

But it was awesome to see the results of that sort of practice and since  I will never have to perform on a pommel horse *,  I can just take the practice thing and run with it.

And knowing the years of practice that went into his demonstration really drove one of his comments home.  He was talking in a general way about practice and how it helps, when he did that call and response set up that every speaker tries to do.

Peter: “And as you know (sing song voice) ‘Practice makes…’”

Audience: “PERFECT!”

Peter: (smiling) “Permanent!”

It took a few seconds for us to laugh at ourselves.  The cliche ‘Practice makes perfect’ is so ingrained that it is practically meaningless, no amount of practice will make you perfect at anything.  It’s a level of control we can’t begin to aspire to.

But permanency?  That is something we can work toward because even semi-permanent puts us ahead (semi-perfect doesn’t sound good at all).

It gave me a whole new framework for my Taekwondo practice, for encouraging my 8 year old to keep at his handwriting homework, for getting my five year old to put his own shoes on.   If we practice those things, they’ll become part of us**.  Something unshakeable.

I like that.

So, I’ve committed to daily practice of my Taekwondo.  How about you?  What are you making permanent?

*I may be going out on a limb here, but I think at 37 I could take gymnastics off my to do list ( had they ever been on there).

**Okay, skeptic, I know where you are going already.  Yes, we *can* make bad habits more or less permanent too.  But if we recognize those habits we can replace them with something else to practice into permanency.  I guess it depends on awareness and the desire to change.

I grew up thinking that my level of worry was completely normal, and that I was somehow keeping danger at bay by worrying.   These ideas weren’t reinforced by my parents or anything, they just existed and somehow got woven into my concept of ‘the way things are.’

My anxiousness wasn’t debilitating, and it didn’t center around any one thing. It was just there and I dealt with it.

Then I started seeing my kids exhibiting some of my coping behaviours (e.g. avoiding competition, overcompensating, withdrawing from heated discussions, stressing about learning new things) and I realized it was time to find some tools for myself, and, to find some tools for them so we could all have easier lives.

I’ll be discussing a lot of those tools on this blog, so I won’t get into them now.  I just thought it was worth noting that one of the things that causes me the most anxiety – trying to parent effectively – is the very thing that is helping me to learn to reduce my anxiousness.

Reason eight million and twelve I am glad to be a parent.

I’m referring to those days that are so hectic that all you can think of is the hecticness,  and you can’t even begin to try and figure out how to relax and feel better.

Start with three deep breaths* but make these three breaths happen while you are either boiling the kettle or peeling an orange (choose your poison!).

If you choose the kettle option, here’s what you do:

1) fill the kettle with fresh water

2) plug it in or put it on the burner

3) close your eyes, and take three deep breaths

4) put your tea in the pot, or the bag in the cup

5) pour the boiling water in the pot or the cup, and let it steep while you breathe in the steam (if you used a pot, pour the tea into a cup before continuing)

6) sit with your tea, smell it, taste it, enjoy how warm the cup feels in your hand, drink your tea

7) breathe some more

now pick one thing to do that will move you a step forward

For oranges

1) pick out an appealing orange (ha!)

2) take three deep breaths, inhaling the orange scent

3) focus as you peel it, does the inside smell different, stronger or weaker than the outside?

4) how does the skin feel in your fingers? how about the inside?

5) separate the orange into sections, and eat one at a time, enjoying the scent of the orange sections

6) breathe some more

7) now pick one thing to do to move yourself forward

Now, I know I’m not tricking anyone here. These are clearly mindfulness exercises but there is a huge difference in saying BE MINDFUL and in saying Do X, then Y, then Z.  If you have a ritual to call on when you feel the hectic hit, then you can put yourself back in a more peaceful frame of mind more quickly.  And a peaceful frame of mind beats the heck out of a frantic one.

Now, breathe again!

*yeeeessss, I do think that they help everything – well, except for cracked ribs, three deep breaths aren’t going to help there.

I was at a real low.

Then I read this blog entry by Briana at Blisscovery and I felt so much better.  She’s talking about  an incident that left her feeling horrible and how she went through a series of steps to feel better.  Step 5 is where the magic is.

Her step 5 was to give herself space to feel what she was feeling.  She didn’t try to talk herself out of it, she just felt hurt, sad, and upset.  And she let herself feel that way.  And then, and then, she STARTED TO FEEL BETTER.

So, after reading that I decided to give myself some room to feel bad.

I feel weird about my kids being in school, and how that changes the amount of time they spend with me, and how that’s going to keep changing as time goes on.  That’s not necessarily bad, it’s not necessarily good, it just is.  And I’m not going to try to talk myself out of that.

I’m probably going to keep disagreeing with those people.  Neither of us is right or wrong, we are just not on the same page.  And that’s frustrating.  But I’m not fighting it.  It is what it is.  And I’m sitting with it.

When I don’t get enough sleep, when I don’t eat right, when I get a low-level cold, I skate around the edges of low-grade depression.  It’s a fact, and even though I try to eat right, try to get enough sleep, sometimes I won’t be able to and I may feel bad.  But that’s not permanent, and it will pass.  I don’t have to fight it, because that just ends with beating myself up about how I ended up here again.  I can just be right there with it until I feel ready to step back on the path.

Thanks, Briana.

One real system-seeking situation for me is my To Do list.  I’ve tried all kinds of systems, paper and electronic but until recently I haven’t been able to find one that lets me keep a good running list and a flexible daily list*.   (And as a juggler of kids, freelancing and volunteer work, I need flexibility)

One thing that does work for me, though, is my whiteboard.

Last fall I picked up a cheap 8×10 white board at the dollar store and put it up next to my calendar in my kitchen where it would be easily visible.  Now, whenever I have a busy day or something that REALLY needs to get done I put a list on the whiteboard where I can see it (and so can the rest of my family) and it creates a sense of urgency about those tasks.

When I’m really organized and I’ve taken the time to plan my week’s To Do on a piece of paper (or on the websites listed below) I can pick the things to do each day from that but often my list is composed by looking around at housework and other tasks as yet undone, and by wracking my brain for details on work and the like.

The board is fairly small so I can’t really add too many tasks (and I put a time limit on any large ones  – work on article 30m – so they are something I can measure, take action on and cross off).  And the funny thing is that the kids respect the white board,  they ask me to put things for them on there (‘I’d like to play videogames this afternoon, can you put that on the list?’  ‘I’d like to have pizza for supper, can you put that on the list?’) because they know that the stuff on there gets done.

If something odd comes up, and I can’t get a job done, I can erase the other tasks and leave that one for the next day without feeling weird about it.

All hail the whiteboard!

What do you use for a To Do list?  Have you used a whiteboard? Did it help?

*I’m currently having good luck with Pocket Informant on my iPod Touch – I’m using in it in conjunction with Google Calendar and Toodledo so I can add things using my desktop computer and then check it on the Touch.