Sunday - a day of reflection and planning

You may have noticed that I tend to do a flurry of posts on Sundays. Sundays have turned into my planning day - my day to reflect on the week just finishing, and plan for the week ahead.

Reflection of the week includes:
- wrapping up what we did for the week in school, and doing any record-keeping
- doing any financial record-keeping and balancing

Planning includes:
- menu planning for the week ahead,
- writing a shopping list if needed,
- working out what we're going to do in each subject for the school week ahead,
- doing any cooking or baking ahead of time,
- working out what activities we all have on, and making lists of anything that needs to be done while out or in preparation,
- working out what paid work has to be done, and sometimes writing quotes or invoicing,
- sometimes writing a couple of blog posts (like this one!) and scheduling it to post sometime in the week ahead,
- making sure work clothes & sports uniforms are washed & ironed.

Having my week planned out like that frees me up to just do it without thinking too much through the week. I know what I have to do, where I have to be and what I need to take with me.

My Sunday is certainly not a day of rest, but it's vital to make my week go better.

Scheme 3785 in teaching Billy personal responsibility...

Wait, I don't think he's been alive that many days :) Oh well, it seems like it!

I've had enough of the pig sty that passes as his bedroom.

I've had enough of buying him stuff every time we go out (usually craft stuff that then gets shoved into a cupboard - or onto the floor) - because I'm weak and can't say no.

Because he has so much stuff, he doesn't take care of any of it. While we were away he lost a (cheapish) hand-held video game that my mum gave him - we remember last seeing it when he took it into a cafe for lunch, so presumably the next customer got a good treat! He begged us for another one but we told him he has to buy it himself.

I've tried confiscating - but he has so much that it doesn't seem to affect him; with-holding treats - but he doesn't seem to care etc etc etc but I don't follow through with them so of course they fail.

I always had the belief that he should do things like keep his room tidy just because he's part of the family, without expecting a reward - well, that obviously doesn't work..

So... pocket money begins... with a star chart above his bed to mark off each day. At this stage the only thing I have on there is to keep his room tidy. Once he masters that (ha ha) I'll try adding other things one at a time.

Putting it above his bed will force me to see it every night, so hopefully I'll keep enforcing it.

He'll have his own money so I won't keep feeling obliged to buy him stuff.

$2/week pocket money is probably less than I spend on stuff for him anyway!

Maybe if he buys stuff himself he'll start to learn to take care of it - especially if he's had to save up for it.

It all sounds good in theory - right??! Please tell me it will work!

Remember the Milk - organising tool

I have to admit, I love a good organising tool! I've tried lots of different methods over the years - diaries, paper lists, Outlook tasks, Flylady, specialised organising software - and usually end up chopping and changing. Diaries and paper lists usually win out though!

For the last couple of weeks, I've been trying a tool I heard about called Remember the Milk - it's essentially a 'to-do' website. You can enter tasks - split them into your own categories (eg work, personal, garden etc), add your own tags, give them due dates, repeat tasks etc etc etc. It stores them on their server, so they can be accessed anywhere from a web browser, but there is also an off-line version that synchronises automatically for when you're not online.

All that is pretty standard with other software but the best thing I've found about RTM is the integration. You can integrate it with iGoogle, Twitter, GMail, Google Calendar, iPhone and heaps more. So it's working for me because I use iGoogle as my home page and all my tasks show up on the iGoogle RTM widget - right there on my home page. That's where most other things have fallen down for me - if I have to remember to load up separate software, it just doesn't happen!

You can also add tasks via email (and by phone too apparently) - so when I get an email from a client, I can just forward it to my special RTM address with some keywords up the top to say what list I want it to go in, and the due date, and it's added straight away.

I haven't tried all of the features - like getting reminders via email or SMS - but it's really working for me so far. Oh and even better - it's Australian!!

Can I do it???!!

Back in January, I made a resolution to stop being online so much. It was fantastic for a few days, I did great for a few weeks, then started slowly getting back into old habits. Now, once again, I'm addicted :(

Hi, my name is Kerrie, and I'm an internet addict :(

I waste so much time sitting here idly reading stuff. Most of it is really interesting, even educational, but I can waste hours just reading stuff that doesn't really enhance my life in any way. Being away on the weekend was great with no emails - I was still available on the mobile if anyone needed me.

My big excuse is that I need it for work, but even when I'm on here for work I waste time on the net. I recently installed a Firefox add-in called Rescue Time that tracks the time you spend on the computer. You then categorise the sites you visit, software you run etc so you can see how you spend your time. Since I installed it a month ago, I have spent 184hrs on the computer - that's an average of 6 hours per day! Even more shocking - 61 hours of that have been spent under my "blogs/forums" category, 42 hours on email, and 22 hours on "random surfing" - visiting sites that I don't categorise under anything else. Only 23 hours were actually spent "working" (although some of the email time would be work emails). Not very productive :(

I'm trying to get up the courage to have a "no computer" day on Sunday - not turn it on all day. Boy it's going to be tough. But I also need to cut down day-to-day.

The things I tried back in January are worth revisiting:

* Keep a notebook beside the computer so I can jot down things I want to do / look up / write. This worked well - back to using it.

* Move my computer from next to the lounge (which is lovely & comfortable) to a desk (which is probably more ergonomically sound but not as comfortable lol) - this will hopefully stop me sitting down and staying there! Ooops, guess where I'm sitting atm :( Back on the lounge. :(

* Don't use the computer while I'm eating breakfast / lunch - a very bad habit I've gotten into!!! Did I mention it's breakfast time? :(

* Yahoogroups - I moderate / own a few Yahoogroups (LETS, Freecycle and related ones). Rely on other moderators more. I've really stepped back from this and other moderators are doing well. Yay for one thing!!

* Limit my time on the email, and also the frequency I'm checking. Need to get back to doing this, rather than checking every 5 minutes!!

* Work email - I removed my work email address from automatically checking in Outlook, so now I have to manually open it to check. I'm still doing this and it's great. I only check work emails a couple of times / day.

* Blogs / groups - Use folders more to organise my mail. May need to cull?? (eeek!) Have reduced the number of groups I was on, especially the really chatty ones, have gone no mail on many so I only check once / week.

Any other hints for how to manage my addiction? For now, the computer is going off until this afternoon..

Wonderful Morning Coffee

On a recent post by Leo at Zen Habits ("12 powerful ways to keep your online life simple and peaceful"), I came across a wonderful add-on for Firefox called Morning Coffee. I wasn't much of a Firefox user, but the add-on sounded so good I had to give it a go.

In a nutshell, Morning Coffee lets you say what web sites you want to open automatically every day or on particular days.

It's been very handy - there are a couple of forums that I like to keep up with but they don't warrant remembering to go to them every day. I tell Morning Coffee I want them to open on Sundays, and lo and behold, when you open your browser and press the morning coffee button, up it comes. No more remembering to go to websites!

There are other sites I like to visit daily, so I mark them as Daily and with the touch of one button, all the sites are loaded. If you use Firefox, go and check it out.