Archive for the ‘brain dump’ Category

Sedonar….I don’t remember, and I tried a Google image search to no avail….

What a productive couple of days getting ready for the new year – and what an interesting past year it has been with medical issues. We are in the recovery state of both stroke and cardiac rehab, and more on that as I continue organizing
myself. The photo is part of a clean-out of iPhoto and part of our developing new photographs for the Milton Artists’ Guild.

For the last couple of days I have been doing a brain dump of all the flotsam left from nearly 3 months of not doing anything. All my plans for NANOWRIMO went by the wayside after the first day sitting in ICU – all my plans for writing while Hubby was napping came to basically nothing – especially after the unexpected stroke and the speech therapy.

I still am trying to reach 1000 blog posts – thought I would do it this year, but nope. Now I need to build everything up again….and I’ve been away from Scrivener (my writing purchase for all my good intentions) long enough I have to relearn it.

Getting myself organized –
brain dump
organize categories
put loose ends into various categories
keep adding to master list as more loose ends come up
get new notebook
create goals for 2018
write categories and then list what goes in each one
set January goals
add dates for the year throughout the notebook
…and just like that (well, after 3 days) I am organized.

NOW THE ONE THING I have to be careful of – don’t obsess over all the lists…I kept last year’s notebook organized and worked with it for up to 8 months off and on. That was major for me. The notebook comes with me every time I am out, I take notes on the back pages of each week, and I do love crossing things off…not so much moving them to the next week. I had to carry over photos for a good friend for 9 months – she finally got them for Christmas – so it’s not on this year’s list at all!

GOALS FOR 2018
local poblicity on tv and other media
increase monthly art income
create at least four new large art pieces\take a major trip
complete cardiac rehab for both of us
teach classes and workshops
continue political activism
Join SEABA
find and go to the dentist
find a good photographer for fabric photos
launch photo line
additional sources of inc0me
join and write for Medium – done!
new moon checks each moth
5 pounds a month

These all see very do-able, based on what we know is ahead of us for the year.

Now getting to the January goals:
arrange Art LEague speakers for February
Join SEABA
Join Medium
Start Cameron poetry project
5 pounds
decide about joining or not NVAA
Shutterstock additions
new inventory for Milton Artists’ Guild
AARP tax appointment for February
Self-care (daily meditation,yoga, walking, flossing – I know, seems picky, but it helps me be accountable to myself – I have to give myself some self-love this year.)
cleaning
Shelby baby quilt
solve Verizon cloud
speech therapy outpatient set up for hubby
doctor appointments
3 days a week for 4 weeks cardiac rehab
Update BCA
finish lap quilt top
join Green Flower for one month
MTD newsletter

all thank yous

Seems like a lot, but I have already crossed off two – THREE –  things, and the first week of Jan 1 – 7 definitely seems do-able. A lot of what I do is add things as they occur to me, and then I move them to when it seems feasible to complete them. I have my categories that I can check each month and make sure I am working on getting through those.

Next time, my word of the year – AGAPE.

How are you getting organized for the new year?

Maelstrom 6

This is exactly how my brain feels today….more than overwhelmed, as I just started a new part-time job that is full-time for the first three months…….so it means wardrobe changes and a bunch of other things, and the usual work isn’t getting done….and I am surrounded by loose ends….which is how many of us feel a lot of the time.

I do have a solution I have used….it was going to be Day 6 in the series….it’s just that Day 6 took a while getting here….

Anyway, welcome to The Brain Dump .

My middle grade students would say I could bring any topic at all back to dinosaur poop and pee. But the Brain Dump is different, and it’s highly useful. I’ve been doing this at least once a month (sometimes more) for the last year, and it has really helped me organize myself. I find that as I start planning for this coming year, before I can do my backplanning (last post), I’ve had to do a serious brain dump and keep the paper close at hand for other loose ends that float to the top.

The idea of a brain dump is to sit with a blank sheet of paper and list everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – that you need to do, whether it is urgent or not. Don’t worry about order, don’t worry about whether things go together, don’t whether about if it’s several weeks away. JUST WRITE IT DOWN.

The advantage to this is to give your brain a break and a rest. Once you take everything that you are trying to keep straight in your brain OUT of it, you don’t have to worry about remembering it all. Now it’s down on paper, and you don’t have to keep thinking about that particular task, and the next one, and three more after that. It’s incredibly freeing and sets you up to be able to make sense of what needs to be done to accomplish goals.

Here are two examples of a couple of sheets I started with on January 1, as I plan out my month and my first quarter, as well as some longer-term objectives. I collected past sheets that still had items listed, and I started a new sheet with some of the newer items arising as a result of the new year.

Nothing is in any order. There are things on here I still haven’t gotten to from the previous year. But that’s okay. My main goal is to free up my mind from worry. I want to have everything laid out so I can use these lists to organize.  I realized yesterday as I was working on one particular area, that I really couldn’t just go into the backplanning process without doing this. Now, keep in mind this might not work for you, but I urge you to try it and see if you can relax a bit about getting things done without forgetting them. I keep my page handy for about a week, so that if something new comes to mind – like renewing the trade name this year – I can easily add it to the list.

Keep in mind, though, that this isn’t a daily or weekly list….this is strictly a list of everything floating in your brain. You want to free up that space without having to worry about the detritus – important or not – floating there. What I end up doing is looking at the master list and choosing what’s critical for the coming week. Your  mileage may vary.

I would love for you to share your thoughts – and lists – if you try this activity. Any suggestions for improving the process?

Getting Organized – Part 4: The Brain Dump

Okay, so my middle grade students would say I could bring any topic at all back to dinosaur poop and pee. But the Brain Dump is different, and it’s highly useful. I’ve been doing this at least once a month (sometimes more) for the last year, and it has really helped me organize myself. I find that as I start planning for this coming year, before I can do my backplanning, I’ve had to do a serious brain dump and keep the paper close at hand for other loose ends that float to the top.

The idea of a brain dump is to sit with a blank sheet of paper and list everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – that you need to do, whether it is urgent or not. Don’t worry about order, don’t worry about whether things go together, don’t whether about if it’s several weeks away. JUST WRITE IT DOWN.

The advantage to this is to give your brain a break and a rest. Once you take everything that you are trying to keep straight in your brain OUT of it, you don’t have to worry about remembering it all. Now it’s down on paper, and you don’t have to keep thinking about that particular task, and the next one, and three more after that. It’s incredibly freeing and sets you up to be able to make sense of what needs to be done to accomplish goals.

Here are two examples of a couple of sheets I started with on January 1, as I plan out my month and my first quarter, as well as some longer-term objectives. I collected past sheets that still had items listed, and I started a new sheet with some of the newer items arising as a result of the new year.

Nothing is in any order. My main goal is to free up my mind from worry. I want to have everything laid out so I can use these lists to organize.  I realized yesterday as I was working on one particular area, that I really couldn’t just go into the backplanning process without doing this. Now, keep in mind this might not work for you, but I urge you to try it and see if you can relax a bit about getting things done without forgetting them.

I would love for you to share your thoughts – and lists – if you try this activity. Any suggestions for improving the process?

Well, it’s been an interesting bunch of days. After thinking I was on a roll, with blog posts in the queue and lots happening, I an felled by lowered ilium and severely twisted muscles and sciatic nerve in the left leg. To the point that I have been flat on my back, unable to walk on my left leg, kinda loopy from the pain killers, and hobbling for another visit to the chiropractor tomorrow. The lump the size of a golf ball (according to hubby) has disappeared, and things are on the mend, I was able to get a lot of loose ends done today, but I am still in a fair amount of pain.

Bummer.

A lot of good things have been happening, and now I have a couple of major deadlines to meet in the next two weeks that should drive some good traffic to the blog, website, and hopefully result in some orders. I just have to be able to do the work.

Two major guest-posts for blogs, a new online gallery, a major website revision, more fabric to make, and some patterns to finish. Momentum is developing, which is exactly what I want, bvut I need to keep up with it. Nice problem to have, especially if nothing is keeping you from working.

So I did a brain dump of everything I could think of that needed to be done this week…and then some. Lots of little things got done today, and tomorrow I will prioritize the major pieces after our marbling session. Usually I get all the little things done, ’cause it looks so good having everything crossed off. But THIS TIME I have to prioritize for my deadlines.

Should be a great – and BUSY –  week!

You may remember that last Sunday I did what I call a “brain dump.” I had so many things floating around in my head that I needed to keep track of, and it was making me nuts. So I listed them all. Here’s last week:

email tutoring parent, email LN, change bed, reinstall Contribute, PD for AI, finish TAFA profile, take care of GoDaddy renewals, email long-lost teacher friend, write the review for C&T, look at Linqto, look at TalkFusion, finish blog post on vendors, finish blog post on quilts, blog post on MAS, email AI prof about video, Quilt Show renewal processed, install quilt album software, do paperwork for “quilt album ambassador,” finish January FMQ project and get it online, photograph new Etsy basket, plan for gift baskets for NW trip, complete Google + stuff, look at Facebook Timeline, score homework from class, mark quizzes from class, finish lesson for Monday, type new lab worksheet, get new business cards ordered, look at Redbubble, book proposal on academic coaching, check on bank loan, meet on company taxes, first newsletter, input names for newsletter, website revisions list, change copyright on website, update and reinstall Contribute, prepare for major copyright submissions, continue working on Visions piece, finish Visions piece, photograph Visions piece, marble this week, plans for deadlines in April since I will be gone.

And here’s my progress:

email tutoring parent, email LN, change bed, reinstall Contribute, PD for AI, finish TAFA profile, take care of GoDaddy renewals, email long-lost teacher friend, write the review for C&T, look at Linqto, look at TalkFusion, finish blog post on vendors, finish blog post on quilts, blog post on MAS, email AI prof about video, Quilt Show renewal processed, install quilt album software, do paperwork for “quilt album ambassador,” finish January FMQ project and get it online, photograph new Etsy basket, plan for gift baskets for NW trip, complete Google + stuff, look at Facebook Timeline, score homework from class, mark quizzes from class, finish lesson for Monday, type new lab worksheet, get new business cards ordered, look at Redbubble, book proposal on academic coaching, check on bank loan, meet on company taxes, first newsletter, input names for newsletter, website revisions list, change copyright on website, update and reinstall Contribute, prepare for major copyright submissions, continue working on Visions piece, finish Visions piece, photograph Visions piece, marble this week, plans for deadlines in April since I will be gone.

Progress, but I realized along about Wednesday that I was focusing on little things that could wait and ignoring the great big deadline for Visions. So Thursday finished the machine quilting, Friday blocked the piece, Saturday did the bindings and started with the embellishments. Now I have one small area to finish and arrange for photography this week – the BIG task that has to get done.

There are a lot of other things to do, but I am teaching this afternoon, midterms need to be scored and reported by Friday, we are marbling tomorrow, and I have one major tutoring session this week, and our arts meeting tomorrow night (where I hope to firm up the photograph….). But I don’t feel the need to do another brain dump, probably not until the end of the month when Seattle starts looming a lot closer.

There is a major marketing piece that also needs to be done this week. Last week I sold 25% of the items from my Etsy store, so I seriously need to restock with new fabrics. It’s a good problem to have!

Wow, it has been a crazy week since getting back from California. There was so much floating around in my head by Monday that I needed to do what I have come to call a “brain dump.” Get it all out on paper so I don’t have to keep worrying about remembering everything. then I can add to the list as new things come up, and cross things off as they a=get done (snort….).

So here’s the “dump” from Tuesday: email tutoring parent, email LN, change bed, reinstall Contribute, PD for AI, finish TAFA profile, take care of GoDaddy renewals, email long-lost teacher friend, write the review for C&T, look at Linqto, look at TalkFusion, finish blog post on vendors, finish blog post on quilts, blog post on MAS, email AI prof about video, Quilt Show renewal processed, install quilt album software, do paperwork for “quilt album ambassador,” finish January FMQ project and get it online, photograph new Etsy basket, plan for gift baskets for NW trip, complete Google + stuff, look at Facebook Timeline, score homework from class, mark quizzes from class, finish lesson for Monday, type new lab worksheet, get new business cards ordered, look at Redbubble, book proposal on academic coaching, check on bank loan, meet on company taxes, first newsletter, input names for newsletter, website revisions list, change copyright on website, update and reinstall Contribute, prepare for major copyright submissions, continue working on Visions piece, finish Visions piece, photograph Visions piece, marble this week, plans for deadlines in April since I will be gone.

And here’s what’s been accomplished…..

email tutoring parent, email LN, change bed, reinstall Contribute, PD for AI, finish TAFA profile, take care of GoDaddy renewals, email long-lost teacher friend, write the review for C&T, look at Linqto, look at TalkFusion, finish blog post on vendors, finish blog post on quilts, blog post on MAS, email AI prof about video, Quilt Show renewal processed, install quilt album software, do paperwork for “quilt album ambassador,” finish January FMQ project and get it online, photograph new Etsy basket, plan for gift baskets for NW trip, complete Google + stuff, look at Facebook Timeline, score homework from class, mark quizzes from class, finish lesson for Monday, type new lab worksheet, get new business cards ordered, look at Redbubble, book proposal on academic coaching, check on bank loan, meet on company taxes, first newsletter, input names for newsletter, website revisions list, change copyright on website, update and reinstall Contribute, prepare for major copyright submissions, continue working on Visions piece, finish Visions piece, photograph Visions piece, marble this week, plans for deadlines in April since I will be gone.

It doesn’t seem like much got accomplished, based on this list, but a lot of these are long-term, and now are reminders for me. Let’s see where I am next week this time.

So do you do anything similar to a “brain dump?” Inquiring minds…..