Change the channel now, if you're not interested in my current thoughts on 'self help' for Yours Truly. I promise - I will not take offense. I can get pretty gag-tastic sometimes when others talk about it. I'm mostly writing this all out for myself.

The Problem

I'm 'driven to distraction' (just always liked that title). In my case, it feels more long tail than in the traditional sense. I follow a cycle of interest > disinterest > renewed interest > renewed disinterest even on things I really like.

It's when it gets difficult or frustrating that I have a knack for suddenly finding heaps of interest in something else. If I have related or connected interests, it makes it even easier to jump topics because working on one feels like working on the other.

With that in mind, I have interests in many different fantasy related genres, art, games, writing, and pretty much anything connected to any of those on some level.

If you're familiar with the concept of 80/20, I find that the real progress is actually made once you enter that difficult 20%. Or maybe it's better to say the progress that matters because anyone and everyone can do the 80% that only requires 20% of the effort.

But here's the thing - that first 80%? It's still a big part of the project du jour, so each time I come back, I find another part of that 'easy' 80%.

What does all this mean? Well, put simply: I spend a whole lot of time spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere. 

Current 'Solution'

Solution is in quotes because there really is no solution. You can adapt to the way your brain works, but that doesn't change how it works. Maybe that's okay. I'm not here to argue for or against.

The Big Picture Planning has been an issue my whole life. It has arguably ended relationships and deeply tried others. I'm too 'in the moment' for almost my whole life. Doesn't seem wrong, to me per se, but it makes things challenging to say the least.

So how do you improve things without a big picture plan?

Habits. Eat the elephant with one small forkfull at a time if need be.

This isn't a new idea. There's tons of literature. One of my favorites is Atomic Habits, but that borders on cliche at this point. (It's also fresh on my mind because Mom got me the new Atomic Habits Workbook for Christmas after seeing an interview with James Clear.

In short: Atomic Habits does a great job of breaking down habits and how to work with them effectively in similar sense to the way James Clear did with To-Do items in Getting Things Done.

If I was to simplify both into one sentence? Break big things down into small (and manageable) bites and then do those little bites.

But that all requires planning. You have to look at the big picture and break it down. That's the very essence of planning, and I fail to do it every time.

So I'm Going to Skip the Planning. Okay, honestly, only sorta. I mean, I'm doing the big picture planning right now, I suppose - just not with a specific project in mind.

So the simple concept is this: Pick as few categories as possible. Health (mental and physical), Wealth, and Social? (Still working that out.) and select some habits (again - as few as possible) to work on to improve those areas. Small, simple, easily attainable habits. Then work like hell to make those small habits routine.

That's it for now. That's the whole shebang. It's why I recently mentioned getting back on Habitica.

Wish me luck. Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.

A while back, I joined Habitica. It's meant to be a 'gamification system' for your tasks and habits. It does this by turning your task lists / habits into goals for an RPG setting.

I don't think I get enough out of it if I am 'playing' by myself, but it has a number of social components built in to help with motivation / accountability.

Since Brad and I were talking about making a game of our tasks / to-do lists, I remembered Habitica and re-joined.

It's a little goofy / hokey, but if it helps us to stay on task...

The Pros:

1. It's free and open source. There's an option to pay to an upgraded 'group' if you want to share specific tasks etc, which I find very appealing for Brad and I, but I'm going to hold off until we prove we can use it with any consistancy.
2. It seems like a solid habit tracker / task management system. If you strip away the 'game' side of things, it handles a lot in a pretty simple / straightforward way. It's tempting to just use it and ignore the 'game' side of things.
3. Breadth and Depth. This might be a subsection of number 2, but I like the way it breaks things down into Habits / Dailies / Tasks. They may be essentially the same (in some senses) but I like those as categories. What's more, I like the depth of information you can add to each, but aren't required to, if that's not your thing.

The Cons:

1. I just wish there was a way to use other artwork than what they have built into the system. It's styled after JRPGs, and that's just really not my thing. This is really not a BIG deal since it's just 'look and feel', but as an illustrator, those goofy / cutesy little pixelated characters / items just bug me.
2. Partly because of number 1, I'm going to have to manually set up a lot of 'rewards' for myself and possibly Brad since I really won't give a shit about earning a new suit of armor for my little avatar.

Anyway, I'm checking it out, and it seems worthwhile, and hell, it's that time of year where we all renew our promises to ourselves to do X,Y, and Z this year - for sure! And who knows, maybe this will help me do that. 🤞

ETA: If you decide to try it out, please feel free to 'friend me' or whatever. UserID in the screen cap at the top of this post. :)