- Behind the scenes: How I planned my distance learning with Amplify & Earnable this weekend
- Daily blogging challenge for April 2021
- Reflecting on overwhelm with buckets
Table of Contents
My week in pictures – daily diary drawings
Highlights of my daily blogging challenge
I started a daily blogging challenge this month. Here’s an overview of what I’ve done so far:
- Destination unknown, but I have a compass: Day 1 challenge
- I’m on a journey. Don’t know where; but I’ll recognise it. With compassion, courage & curiosity I’m on my way to autonomy, focus & joy.
- More is less: How to do twice as much with half the effort
- Realising that studying more wasn’t succumbing to workaholism – this time. Instead, the two courses can support me & enable cross-pollination.
- Is it worth studying with Steve Pavlina & Ramit Sethi?
- I’m learning about creative flow with Steve Pavlina and starting a business with Ramit Sethi. Is it worth it? Yes, I think so, here’s why.
- Weeknotes: My learning plan for effective, joyful asynchronous study (this post! Very meta…)
- Behind the scenes of distance learning: How I planned my weekend creativity & entrepreneurship studying to be effective & fun asynchronously.
Planning my learning & creating study plans
In the early hours of Saturday I was moved to make a learning plan. I don’t know why, my brain often starts whirring in the middle of the night… So, I started planning. I’m sharing what I did as part of practising being more transparent about my process.
My learning plan for that day was hugely ambitious, but it wasn’t overwhelming because it had:
- Focus. Prioritised & limited to 3 areas: Amplify, Earnable, Retreat (Rest + Play + Outside)
- Autonomy + Joy. Everything on the list is stuff I want to do. It’s all self-generated based on desire. And there are no ‘shoulds’. if I change my heart-mind, just take it off the list
- Constraints. Boundaries. Time-boxes: When time runs out, stop.
My daily blogging challenge is the exception on the last point about time constraints, but:
- Technically, there is a time-box of 24 hours every day… 😅
- I’m working towards reducing/eliminating my perfectionist tendencies & being content to post stuff that’s unpolished & in progress.
- The idea is not to publish sparkling & pristine things each day!
How I created my plan on Sat, 3 Apr, at 2 am…
Drawing and writing my first thoughts
- I had a bunch of stuff swirling in my head when I woke in the early hours, thinking about my courses and what’s left to do and how to ‘catch up’. Or, reframing that: How to make progress more effectively and more speedily, in a sustainable way that stimulates my brain and plays to my strengths.
- So, I started drawing/writing plans using a tablet, including what I wanted to do ‘the next day’ (technically the same day, but in the daytime), what short-term goals I envisaged for myself.
- For example,
- for Amplify, I want to have completed module 2.1, at least, by the fifth live call on Wednesday
- for Earnable, I want to complete work suggested for days 1-5 by Sunday
Plan:-
1: Amplify, 1 lesson.
2: Earnable, matrix & video.
3: artist date, read Undrowned, sing musicals, something from my spreadsheet.Social learning:-
1: email chain, 2: forum, 3: creative cluster/s.Targets:-
Extracts from my handwritten & drawn plan
1: Amplify, module 2.1 by Wednesday.
2: Earnable, day 5 sprint by Sunday.
3: artist dates, daily new play Saturday-Tuesday
Switching from writing to typing to refine my plan
- Having worked out this stuff ‘on paper’ (but, actually, sketching on a tablet), then I started typing out my plan in a doc
- After listing what I wanted to do on Saturday, I listed stuff I’ve done already and what’s left to do between what I’ve done and what I want to have done by the deadlines I created
- When I did this I realised that my plan for the Earnable course wasn’t realistic, so I revised it
- So, now I had an ambitious, motivating & detailed plan for Saturday, and an ambitious & broader plan for the next few days
Using ADHD superpowers: Specifically, stimulation needs sometimes mean I need to watch/listen to something whilst also doing something else. So, I planned to watch/listen to lessons whilst skimming/sketching on my worksheets or writing out my intentions
Remembering other stuff I’m doing too
- Listed other stuff I’m doing, which I rarely include when I’m planning stuff like this, because I forget that I do a lot of stuff. I’ve been wanting to do this for a week or so. So, on that list is stuff like:
- Learning German (daily, using apps & practising with friends)
- Tutoring a child in Plants, Key Stage 1
- Learning about ADHD
- Supporting a friend with access to work
- Started drafting this section of my weeknotes around 3am, which helped me further refine my plans. So meta…!
There’s a hole in my bucket… 🪣
Recently, my friend Chuck & I were talking about buckets with holes, I don’t remember exactly how the conversation happened. But I remember that we both drew buckets with holes and then shared our pictures with each other. Which was awesome
On Fri, 2 April 2021 — Sitting here, full of hilarity, laughter spilling over because I’ve never heard this song until now. I have the lyrics ‘There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza’ is in my head from somewhere, but it wasn’t this version.
Also, this song is a perfect example of the mental load, when it comes to distribution of housework & gender, as illustrated in this comic: “You should’ve asked”
Support artists
Support Chuck SJ on Patreon because I don’t want you to miss out on Chuck’s rad zines, which bring me joy and rest every month
Ask for help: Practising behaviour change
One of my goals for 2021 is to ask for help. Which is a challenge for me.
My outlook for the year centres freedom by interdependence. So, I’ll try talking about asking for help in my daily posts.
Asking for help can be as:
- simple as searching for an answer online,
- social as asking friends & acquaintances,
- stretching as asking strangers!
Last month, asking for help supported me to be courageous instead of following my first thought/fear to shrink myself.
As a result, I was interviewed by Spotify about my work leading people to explore building trust and relationships when we’re not online at the same time, as part of my work with asynchronous ways of working.
🏆