Last year, my partner was coming close to the end of her training and began looking to move, bringing up the question of whether I should remain in my position at the time or find new work. Several months into the pandemic and complete social distancing aside from masked grocery store runs, I realized that remote work would likely be even more difficult given there would be no office and smiling colleagues to return to once workplaces were deemed safe. I left my position and have been applying around and keeping the house since then, but COVID-19 has weakened the regular structure of our lives and made time management difficult. How are we to combat this, then, as the days continue to blur into months? I will share what I have found to be helpful in managing my time and keeping my little world turning.
Be Kind To Yourself
I want to start by acknowledging the immense, hitherto unimagined stress and isolation we have experienced and continue to go through during the pandemic. If you didn’t witness the slew of articles and posts encouraging equivocal and even additional productivity during the pandemic that was popular early on, I am glad for you. Without any reference point for an event like this, I spent much of my early time in the pandemic swinging between pride over maintaining my workout routine and kicking myself over my lack of creative and professional output given how I now had so much “free time at home.” I now recognize that what might have been regarded as free time before was now hindered by the mental capacity given up to hyper vigilance, worry, anger and grief that has been present in my mind through the pandemic. The best you can is good enough, and regardless of how many lists you make, I want you to take the time and space you need to recognize the impact of and process the pandemic, economic depression, and lost time we are all experiencing this year. Please try to recognize the little victories and cherish your loved ones right now. Now, on to what has helped me out!
All You Need Is Ink
While there are dozens of productivity apps, extensions and add-ons out there in the world, and I will talk about my favorites later, you can begin with only a pen and paper. I grew up spending a lot of time with my grandmother, who was a teacher and librarian for much of her life and spent her time after retiring helping me with school and making fabulous dinners for my mother and I. She is a wonderful woman, and if anyone has tried making a big dinner for family and friends, I am sure you will appreciate the need for time management to get everything plated while it’s still warm! As I was raised keeping lists and loving the satisfaction of checking or crossing off additions to it, this is still what I do today. If I have a special event coming up or know I will have a busy day of errands, I frequently write down my to-do list on a little notepad and take the pad with me I also keep a paper calendar hung in our kitchen, in part to remind myself of events we’ve hosted and enjoyed, and in part to have an easy reference when planning. Picking out an annual calendar can be a fun experience of getting to know what your household likes to see every morning–ours has a new beautiful image from a national park each month. You could also include notes for when bills are due, deadlines are coming up, and more depending on your needs. As mine is a shared family calendar visible to anyone who visits, I tend to keep these brief. In the next section, I will talk about my favorite medium for more creative, detailed and personalized time-keeping.
Reawaken and Relax with Bullet Journaling
When I first started hearing about bullet journaling, it just sounded like a to-do list with extra steps–but bullet journaling is so much more than this! While the basics of the practice involve arranging a birds-eye view of your year that becomes increasingly focused until you’re monitoring your day-to-day tasks, there are tons of unique tracking methods and pages people have designed for their needs that you can take on too. I love bullet journaling because it brings together productivity, design, and creativity all together into a lovely little book you can carry around with you and jot notes into whenever you need. You can even buy the specifically branded journals if sitting down with a ruler sounds like too much energy. My bullet journal has a tracker for hearth cult, practicing instruments, hiking, and my regular bills and savings account balance. I have daily trackers for water intake, making a to-do list, reading, and leaving the house clean for the next morning. If you are looking for something that both excites you to build on projects and is soothing to turn to at the end of your work day, I highly recommend picking this up. Much like writing in a paper calendar, it offers me the same comfort and joy of being able to look back on happy events, or understand why I might be feeling down if I can’t quite place why–while I personally do not use the bullet journal for long-form traditional journaling, I do note significant events for reflection.
Recommended Applications
The productivity folder on my iPhone is 3 pages. I attribute this to installing a new app any time I read something exciting about the new trend in productivity, but I do have a couple I return to regularly. I don’t tend to appreciate shame as a motivator in applications–if you are looking for this, I don’t have much here for you, but I am sure there are applications out there with harsher language or aggressive reminders if that’s your bag.
Productive is a colorful, rewarding application to use for recurring daily tasks. You can set your own custom tasks or pull from the prefabricated lists they have created, set your own task icons and pleasant rich colors for them, assigning them to different frequencies and times of day. When you complete a task, it plays a pleasant chiming sound, and skipping a task does not result in shaming. You an also review your statistics and pick challenges, like the happy morning challenge or bedtime routine, to build new positives into your week.
Todoist is my favorite app to use for longer-term tasks, or tasks that are not daily goals. I have it installed on my mobile devices and computer, and the app works really well at syncing across devices pretty instantaneously. You receive achievements for completing tasks throughout the day, and Todoist allows you to create projects and categories. Todoist also lets you designate times by which the task is due, so I have a reminder to submit a library book I have checked out, for example. The color scheme is a little darker than Productive, which I am fine with–I tend to set all available applications to night mode so as not to wear out my eyes so much.
Forest is a great timing app that rewards your completing the set time by planting a virtual tree or shrub, and giving you a small volume of coins dependent on the length of time worked. You can use these coins to buy new trees and upgrades. I use this especially when I am reading or writing to limit swapping between applications or getting distracted picking music. If you find you still switch out of the app with every notification banner atop your screen, you can turn on their Deep Focus Mode, which causes your plant to wither if you leave the app unless you return to it. The Deep Focus mode is easy to enable and disable from the main screen of the app, so if you are awaiting an important message you can disable it for your present work. They also have a related app Flora, which I have installed but have not yet used, which allows you to share your productivity with friends.
I hope if these pique your interest you’ll check them out, and that they are helpful for you! As mentioned before, remember to be kind to yourself and understand that productivity during COVID-19 is understandably a larger undertaking than prior to the pandemic. My plan is to write about something lighter, keeping up with family, and skill-building while at home. If you have any comments or recommendations, feel free to respond below or message me via the Contact page.
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