Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Getting back to basics and giving myself grace

Balancing all the things I need to do in life and all the things I want to do has proven challenging.  It was evident to me from the last quarter review and my efforts in June that my previous style of planning just wasn’t cutting it.

The prime example of lack of balancing was in April which was a disaster in achieving my to-do list even though I managed to write over 60,000 words.  While there have been life hiccups/events in the mix through May and June which have complicated matters, it was clear that I needed a new approach.

Back to basics

At the start of July, I went back to basics.  I sat down and worked through my personal vision for what I wanted to achieve.  I came up with these three statements:

Wellbeing: Have a firm foundation of health and happiness. 

I’m not going to achieve anything if I’m not physically and mentally fit.

Work: Create and grow income streams that enable me to enjoy and make the most of my life. 

This one has some importance as money is unfortunately needed.  In changing the direction and focus of my career, I no longer have a reliable income stream from a paying job.  Ensuring I have enough income to cover expenses and to occasionally do something fun is a key necessity.

Writing: Write what I want to write for fun and community.  

I made this a separate thing as while I plan for one of my income streams to be writing, I don’t just want to write for money.  I want to enjoy my writing and I like writing fanfic and exchanging comments with readers.

With these three aims in mind, I created programmes of work for each area and planned what I want to prioritise and get done in the next three months.  For the last three weeks I’ve built a summary weekly to-do list which covers what I should do for the upcoming week based on my planning.

Permission to give myself grace

At the top of my weekly to-do list, I have the following mantra: This list is subject to having enough spoons.  Listen to your body.  Give yourself grace.

(If you don’t know Spoon Theory, it’s essentially a way of looking at energy expenditure when you have a chronic illness.)

I’ve also accepted that I usually over-estimate what I can get done in a week so I’m only ever expecting to get around 80% of my tasks completed – and that’s OK.  As long as what I need to get done gets done, if there are few things I wanted to get done which didn’t make it, that’s fine.

How’s it going?

3 weeks in, and I’m loving the new approach because I feel like I’m taking care of my health and I’m achieving a lot.  I’m especially pleased at how I’ve managed to find a new writing rhythm. 

It’s not a perfect rhythm – until writing is my main source of income, I do have to plan for other work – but it is working. 

I write every day.

I’ve managed to make excellent progress on A Jump to the Left which is my priority writing project and I’m on track to finish writing this week as I had hoped (barring any unexpected life events). Unfortunately, one of the things I’ve realised this week is that while the writing will be completed, I might not have the editing time I want with the story.  It’s the second in a series of five stories overall and I need to make sure that everything is being laid out properly for the future and that this second story is cohesive on its own. While the plan has been to post A Jump to the Left in July, I think I may need to revise that to early August.  I’m going to sleep on it another couple of nights and decide towards the end of this week when I can gauge just how much editing time I really need.

What has been brilliant is that I’ve also managed to keep up with these writing logs, the reviews I’ve planned, and even completed a couple of articles for LinkedIn profile.

The approach is giving me the structure I need to focus my time and balance writing with other tasks I need to get done, but it also gives me permission to be ill on the days when I’m not well or to rest when I need to rest. 

This week I had a very severe headache most of Monday and Tuesday, but I managed some exercise and some writing even so.  I just paced myself and did activity when there was a period of the day when I felt better.   

Celebrations and Reflections   

The other part of the approach I’ve implemented is having an achievements and reflections list – I just have it open and add to it when I complete something or when I get hit with a reflection.  For example, “it’s OK to know you don’t have the spoons for a small task when you are prioritising other things.”  I had this thought when I decided not to do a relatively quick task in the kitchen because I knew I needed the energy to do several other tasks that day.  Before I would tell myself ‘it’s five minutes to do the task, just do it!’ and then have no energy left to get the task I really needed done.   

Seeing my achievements add up over the course of the week is motivating and inspiring. Something to celebrate.

Overall, I’m just really pleased with the approach so far.  It’s definitely working for right now and I’m definitely celebrating getting my groove back.