📙 #009 Enforced Ship Jumping

HOUSEKEEPING

Someone, me, thought it was a good idea to use the newsletter service belonging to Twitter for that sweet, sweet integration.

This is a heads-up that I'll be making a switch to a new (undetermined) newsletter service provider in the next couple of weeks. I don't think you'll have to do anything at your end unless some data protection laws mean you have to click "yes" on something.

NEW YEAR AND ALL THAT ARBITRARILY GOES WITH IT

It's fair to say that the last couple of months of 2022 were a bit of a mess, full of delightful things like unexpected hospital visits. Not me; I'm fine. The rest of the Catt Clan are thankfully doing okay now too.

One of the main ideas for this newsletter was to let you lovely lot know about things for sale and the like before the riff-raff on social media. However, there's been very little in the way of new stuff, something I'm hoping to change in the next couple of months.

The thing I'm very grateful to Past-Dan for is setting up my time & project management system in such a way it can handle disruption. For example, there was one week when slightly panicking tired me decided he knew better, ignored everything I'd written down for such situations and re-prioritised everything.

Friends, that week went badly. It turns out that non-stressed, level-headed past me put all the processes in place for a reason, and I just had to remember to trust the system or else what's the point in it?!

QUARTER ONE

Very nerdily, I use a combination of The Twelve Week Year, by Brian P. Moran & Michael Lennington, to keep myself on target for the more significant projects and Cal Newport's Time Blocking for the day-to-day stuff. All thrown into a horrid mangle of Notion templates that I wouldn't wish on anyone but work for me.

On Monday, I set aside an hour to plan the week. This does two things for me; it stops me from getting hyper-focused on one project. At most, I can only carry on for a week before once again having to sit down and forcing myself to scrutinise everything.

The second is it gives me a moment to stop and ask, "What am I trying to do with this project/task?" I tend to switch to doing something for fun (which is fine) but doesn't have a purpose that matches my goals. Meanwhile, I have a whole stack of other things I could do that both match my goals and are also fun.

Anyway, the first Monday of the first week of a new "Twelve Week Year" block is planning out what I'm trying to get done over the next three months. Like most of my planning, this involves post-it notes.

The top row is January, and the second is Feb, etc.

In the next twelve-week block, I have THREE proper NEED TO GET DONE digital art projects. One personal one, one collaboration and one group show.

Those are probably the most essential artist/income-wise.

This month is "Genuary". It's one of those internet months, like "Inktober", where there's a different prompt each day. I know full well that I don't have time for it, and I aught NOT to do every one, but I know I will not be able to stop myself. So I may as well schedule two hours a day for it.

You can keep track of how quickly that falls apart on my Genuary page over here: https://revdancatt.com/genuary/2023

I'm still trying to do a YouTube video a week. Making one of those would take me a whole week in itself. On the one hand, I'm getting faster at editing those. On the other hand, the darkness and bad weather means most of them have been simple face-camera-and-talking videos, so perhaps that's why it's quicker?

I know for a fact that I'm still trying to do too many different things on YouTube, but then I've never cared too much for what I "should" and "shouldn't" be doing there. So despite that, I've convinced myself to try doing a video version of Week Notes, a tradition of writing down the things you've done each week in a blog post but as a video.

Considering that I barely manage to make one video a week and have to get my shit together once a month for the profit/loss videos, and the fortnightly newsletters are about four times a year, there is no way this is going to work!

The Post-it notes, however, tell me there should be enough time if nothing goes wrong. And if it does, then all the yellow and pink notes get shoved along a couple of months!

OUT OF TIME

My tomato-shaped kitchen timer is telling me I'm out of time for this, so I will end with a thank you for your sticking around. I apologise in advance for any bumpy turbulence while we change newsletter software, and I'll see you in the next one.

Much love ❤️

Dan