Productivity
😎
I’m time blocking again, and so far it’s working very well. My disorganized evenings the week before didn’t leave much time for projects, and I spent most of the time blogging. This highlighted a dissatisfaction I’d been having, that I was developing some good routines that were tangibly improving my life, but only in its day-to-day aspects and not in relation to my longer-term goals. I needed to carve out time for my projects. Returning to an idea I picked up from Cal Newport, I created a new spreadsheet template that lets me plan out blocks of my personal time and then record how I actually spend it. Comparing my planned and actual schedules should help me plan more realistically. And planning out my whole day instead of only part of it should keep my evening tasks from being derailed by a disorderly afternoon.
Housekeeping
😎
I did a bunch of cleaning. Now that I had a tentative cleaning schedule and a way to reserve time for it, I spent the week trying it out, especially tackling the harder parts that have been burdening my mind with their griminess. I took a different room each day and dedicated an hour to however much I could get done, with exceptions for a couple of rooms that took more work. It definitely feels like my home has entered a new plane of clean. Next my goal is to reduce my regular cleaning time to 30 minutes a day, which I’d like to spend on the Maker Method‘s “express clean” for the day’s room plus one or two extra spots that need attention.
Finances
🙂
I continued researching my simpler financial goals. I spent last week on technology and home goods I might want to buy over the next few years. Thanks to my time blocking, I was able to get through much more of it than before. For this research I’m focusing on how much money I’ll need for these potential expenses and over what time frame. Later I’ll look at how to reach these goals.
Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva (video interview) got me thinking about what to invest in. I rarely hear from Native Americans, so his comments were very interesting and thought provoking. The primary audience for the book is philanthropists, so listening to it was like peeking into another world, but it did get me thinking more seriously about socially responsible investing (Ben Felix’s take), or even the more ambitious concept Villanueva prefers, mission-related investing.
Movies
🙂
Wall Street left me with mixed opinions. I wasn’t a fan of the soundtrack, and I’m sure some of the casting choices could’ve been better. But it’s a very quotable movie (I found out it’s where “Greed is good” came from), and I’m happy to report that the villain is not my only favorite character this time. I also liked Bud’s father, Carl Fox, and his boss, Lou Mannheim, who reminded me of the authors of the investing books I listened to, people in finance who actually have a heart. And thanks to those books, I again halfway understood the plot of the movie. Hopefully once I dig into my own investing decisions, I’ll learn enough to understand four-fifths.
