{"id":2758,"date":"2019-07-14T11:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-14T15:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/?p=2758"},"modified":"2019-07-28T11:29:53","modified_gmt":"2019-07-28T15:29:53","slug":"bullet-journals-or-excellence-v-perfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2019\/07\/14\/bullet-journals-or-excellence-v-perfection\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullet Journals or, Excellence v. Perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Just sat down with my Bullet Journal, as I do every Sunday, to plan out the next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do this for a lot of reasons. I want to make sure I’m following up on everything I need to. It is very easy to allow things to fall through the cracks. This helps prevent it. I cannot say I always follow through on everything in exactly a timely manner. I don’t. Without something to keep me on track, I’ll follow my whims. That gives me about a 15% accuracy on my Get the Important Stuff Done score. When I use a tracking system of some sort, that brings the Get Important Stuff Done score up to between 75% and 90%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beepy reminders are usually at about a 75%. That’s still not bad at all, mind. But it’s stressful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes I get tired, or depressed or whatever, and to be quite frank, I do not necessarily jump on everything I think needs to be done. A beepy reminder gives you a window of RIGHT NOW to do it before it falls off your mental radar. That’s fine when I’m all happy and motivated and shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not always all happy and motivated and shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bullet Journal brings me more up to that 90%, which is as good as it is ever going to get. One of the nice things about my Bullet Journal is its flexibility. The Bullet Journal means that I get more Important Stuff done while actually being less immediately on the ball. It’s forgiving. It’s imperfect. Things get crossed off when I decide it’s not Important Stuff after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I lose interest in a self-assigned project, I have the material to circle back to it if I need to. It makes me less obsessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I’m procrastinating on something I REALLY have to do, consistently migrating that task day by day does poke me to get it off my plate better but feels less emotionally fraught to me somehow. It’s there. I need to do it, but I can migrate it to tomorrow. You know what? It still gets DONE. That’s cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I am Just Not Feeling It, the Bullet Journal waits quietly and without judgment until I go back to it — all necessary information and plans there. With most task management software, an overdue task turns red, or keeps beeping at you and making you feel bad in a way that the Bullet Journal doesn’t (at least for me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love the imperfection and messiness of my Bullet Journal. It helps me Not Waste My Life, but still allows for the dips and swells in my emotional energy. It’s such a beautiful reality check for me. When I start feeling badly about myself, I can look and see how I’ve been spending my days. I can sometimes feel like “I’ve gotten nothing done” and when I look back, I realize that no, I PLANNED to play that video game. It was on purpose, so that time was not wasteful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I put more than chores in my Bullet Journal. For me, that’s part of what makes it such a wonderful reality check. Am I getting Enough Done? is certainly an important question. So is Am I doing things to recreate and enjoy myself? Did I do the laundry, pay the bills, and get to the dentist? Great! Did I take a walk, play a video game, or knit or see a movie? That’s important, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it helps me keep things in balance. The reality is that I have no middle gears, and am appallingly bad at moderation. I tend to want things to be perfect and have been known just to give up when I can’t do that. There’s a time and a place for shooting for perfection, certainly, though I’ve had it pointed out that shooting for excellence rather than perfection makes more sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellence is different from perfection. Excellence means you’re consistently striving for better. Excellence isn’t binary — either meeting the mark or not. It’s not a pass\/fail proposition, but a fairly consistent effort. It cannot ever be “perfect” and even accepts that there is always something else you can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is hard for me because I tend to be binary in my thinking. Of course, I do. It’s EASY to think in binary terms. Okay, that’s fine and even appropriate for some endeavors, but it really doesn’t reflect the realities of an entire life. There’s no such thing as a binary human life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is exactly the point of the imperfection of my Bullet Journal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just sat down with my Bullet Journal, as I do every Sunday, to plan out the next week. I do this for a lot of reasons. I want to make sure I’m following up on everything I need to. It is very easy to allow things to fall through the cracks. This helps prevent it. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Bullet Journals or, Excellence v. Perfection”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bullet-journal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/BulletJournalExcellencevPerfection.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2764,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions\/2764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}