It’s one or the other really, isn’t it? User error or system error. And in this case I think it might be me. But the system had a fault so it failed me too. Except I created it.
OK. I suspect this isn’t making a lick of sense so I might start at the beginning and you can tell me what you think.
I have this super sophisticated to-do system going on at the moment. It involves post-it notes and my kitchen cupboard doors. See. TA DA!
I bet you are jealous you didn’t think of this
This cupboard is right next to where I stand in the kitchen preparing and cooking dinner, coincidentally when I have most of my light bulb moments, so there couldn’t be a better place for my lists. PLUS, they are at just above eye height so I see them whenever I look in the this direction. Which is often. All good.
EFFECTIVE.
I’m loving the yellow too. Stands right out.
I use it mainly for work days and the TEAM (that would be me) loves it. I’m getting a 100% take up rate. It rocks.
The system is pretty straightforward. If I think of something I write it on the relevant category post-it. Then as the “work” day approaches (although I do it on Sunday’s too – basically any child free days) I start a post-it for THAT day and itemise what I would like to achieve that day. Some things I pull from the category lists, some I pluck from my ever so slightly functioning brain. I put the list in the order I’d like to achieve it and am pretty firm about completing things in that order otherwise I jump around like a very happy but ineffective fire cracker and get only half of the work done.
It’s been working well and I really love it…until today.
OH NO I hear you cry. You’re devastated, I know. I was too.
Sometimes the note has tasks on it I need to complete outside the home. I had a big list of these today so I made a separate post-it (UH OH) that was to come on my outing with me. As I was sitting at the traffic lights turning into the shopping center car park it dawned on me that the post-it did not make it out of the front door. I’ll admit it. I panicked. The whole point of the post-it note system is that I don’t have to remember the items for myself. It’s like brain dumping. So I’m sitting there workshopping it in my mind at the traffic lights and I feel confident I can at least remember 3/4 of the list. The rest may come to me later.
New strategy: any note that needs to leave the house must be entered into the mobile phone.
I don’t like to use the phone normally as I hate that I have to actually open the notes app to even look at my list. Usually I just forget it even exists as soon as I enter it. So I’m thinking if I incorporate the post-it process up until the very last step then I will get the best of both worlds. Surely that can’t fail.
Anyway, I got to the shopping center and I was all jittery waiting to park my car so I could write down the 3/4 of a list that I remembered. My plan was to drop the car with the car wash people for an hour and rush around and do my errands and then head home. But second fail…car wash dudes can’t give me my car back for 2 hours. That doesn’t help my already packed day. Schedule is totally worked over now.
In the end I arranged a booked time with the guys for just over an hour later, did a few of my later tasks early (felt REALLY flexible) and popped home to get my lost post-it note. All in all I got home about an hour or so later than I’d planned it in my head *sigh*.
Part of that was probably my attempts at over achieving (do you do that too?) and the other part was probably to do with the fact that I didn’t plan quite as well as I thought I had.
This never used to happen to me pre-baby. I used to keep every last detail IN MY HEAD. I was AMAZING. Now there is no chance. Simply NO CHANCE. I am now a person who forgets things and that was never me. NEVER. People that forgot things frustrated me.
So it seems life is teaching me a lesson in patience, among other things.
How about you? What systems do you use? And if you have kiddos have things changed for you massively since having bub?
