Planning to succeed

I was sitting here in my lab this morning and reflecting on all the things I want to do in it. The thing about getting things done is they don’t get done unless you actually take the time to do them. A book will happily sit unopened on your bookshelf for your entire life if you don’t take the time at some point to pick it up and read it.

In this light I thought perhaps I might stand more of a chance of actually completing some of my projects if I put some structure around getting them done. To that end I have one specific activity to do for each day of the week:

  • circuit day (make a Maxitronix circuit or similar)
  • programming day (write some code, pick a project, there are lots)
  • old book day (review and document an old book)
  • Xbox day (recap an Xbox, or work on an otherwise broken one)
  • writing day (write something, e.g. work on my book, a long form blog post, etc)
  • new book day (read and document a new book)
  • holiday! (watch a movie! play a game!)

On circuit day and Xbox day I will make a video of the activity and publish on In The Lab With Jay Jay. The outputs from the other activities are not video but a lot of that will end up on the web somewhere too.

The sub-pattern is:

  • Video
  • Writing
  • Reading

I repeat that twice in one week and then give myself a day off.

Traditionally I’m very bad when it comes to having structure in my life, so I can only hope that this attempt to introduce some structure actually works out… wish me luck!

How to hack the beliefs that are holding you back

Read an article today, How to hack the beliefs that are holding you back. Not sure that I will actually be applying any of those techniques but I do feel as though I’m holding on to some beliefs which are holding me back and I would like to abandon them. I think I’m afraid of being successful, even though that seems silly. I just worry that I’m not qualified enough to be making decisions which will affect people’s lives and I worry about the time in my life being soaked up so much that I don’t have the time to give other people. At the moment if people, anyone, needs me, then I’m available, regardless of how important they are. I worry that if I were successful I’d be in so much demand that I’d have to start picking and choosing who I gave my time to and I’m loathe to do that. I dunno. I’m pretty sure I want to be successful. I’m not sure what’s holding me back. But I haven’t been getting on with things in the way that I feel I should be if I want to be successful.