"Three things"
22 January 2017 15:01![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enismirdalWhen the weekend comes around, my natural inclination is normally to spend as much time vegetating on the sofa, spodding and generally minimising human contact and maximising tea intake. (Indeed, if I don't get a decent amount of downtime at weekends each month I start to stress out.) The trouble with this is, when taken to extremes, I end up stuffy-headed, grumpy and with a monster headache. All of which is not desirable at all.
I've finally reached a stage in life where I can get up at "average human" times without physical distress, and getting up between 8 and 9am on a weekend recharges my batteries properly and leaves me feeling non-tired. This helps. It gives me much more daylight to do Things in.
The other thing I've found that helps to avoid symptoms of extreme vegetation is the Three Things rule. On weekends, bank holidays and other days off, I set myself the task of doing three distinct tasks over the course of the day. These are governed by a few guidelines:
1. They have to be useful. Binge-watching Silent Witness on Netflix is NOT an acceptable thing.
2. Following on from this, they can't be purely for pleasure even if they're sort of useful, like writing stories or playing Fungi with CRI. (Incidentally, Fungi is an awesome two-player card game and I wholeheartedly recommend it.)
3. They mustn't be things I'd do anyway, like having a shower, or washing up after dinner. They have to be in addition to those things.
4. They can't be non-negotiable things that must happen that day no matter what, like cleaning out Lupanine if she is due for it.
Thus, a combination of check car tyre pressure/repot plant/sweep kitchen floor counts, as does go to Tesco/mark students' papers/mend hem on trousers. I am still on the fence about whether something like laundry (which can be put off for a while but isn't really a lot of effort) should count, and ditto for cleaning out the stick insects, as that can be procrastinated for a couple of weeks if needs be but probably ought not be.
But it forces a certain level of activity, means my body has to generate its own heat instead of absorbing it from a radiator, and leaves me feeling more human, so I guess that's a thing.
I can totally do this Adulting thing, look at me go...
I've finally reached a stage in life where I can get up at "average human" times without physical distress, and getting up between 8 and 9am on a weekend recharges my batteries properly and leaves me feeling non-tired. This helps. It gives me much more daylight to do Things in.
The other thing I've found that helps to avoid symptoms of extreme vegetation is the Three Things rule. On weekends, bank holidays and other days off, I set myself the task of doing three distinct tasks over the course of the day. These are governed by a few guidelines:
1. They have to be useful. Binge-watching Silent Witness on Netflix is NOT an acceptable thing.
2. Following on from this, they can't be purely for pleasure even if they're sort of useful, like writing stories or playing Fungi with CRI. (Incidentally, Fungi is an awesome two-player card game and I wholeheartedly recommend it.)
3. They mustn't be things I'd do anyway, like having a shower, or washing up after dinner. They have to be in addition to those things.
4. They can't be non-negotiable things that must happen that day no matter what, like cleaning out Lupanine if she is due for it.
Thus, a combination of check car tyre pressure/repot plant/sweep kitchen floor counts, as does go to Tesco/mark students' papers/mend hem on trousers. I am still on the fence about whether something like laundry (which can be put off for a while but isn't really a lot of effort) should count, and ditto for cleaning out the stick insects, as that can be procrastinated for a couple of weeks if needs be but probably ought not be.
But it forces a certain level of activity, means my body has to generate its own heat instead of absorbing it from a radiator, and leaves me feeling more human, so I guess that's a thing.
I can totally do this Adulting thing, look at me go...