May 29, 2011

I’m having a bad calendar week. I don’t check my calendar often enough, and I miss things. The other day, I missed a Skype chat. Yesterday, I sprinted to the subway station in order to get downtown for a 4:30 PM performance of the opera Orfeo ed Euridice. I made it to my 5th-floor seat just before the lights dimmed. I’ve missed other things in the past – not many, but enough to point to a clear life-bug that I need to hack.

What can I do to get back into the rhythm of having a solid, trusted system for calendar reminders and tasks?

Put it in my way. I always check my Android in the morning. I can clean up my task list, add calendar entries to my lock screen (I’m trying out Executive Assistant on my phone), and get into the habit of checking those before I indulge in reading feeds. I added a calendar widget to my home screen too – I think that will help.

Set up interruptions. I can set my calendar alarm to something I usually notice, such as my ringtone. When I combine this with using timed mutes instead of manually muting my phone, that should make it easier to let important things interrupt me.

Here we go!

Today was a wonderfully domestic day. I did laundry, baked bagels and banana bread, helped J- make a soap holder based on Nyan Cat, planted bok choi seeds, and sewed a bright orange cover for my Kindle so that I stood a better chance of finding it around the house. I’m starting to feel properly relaxed, slowly unfolding myself from the ack!stress!stress!stress! of travel. Not too relaxed – I’ve got another short trip coming up – but I’m beginning to feel normal again.