Good thing: I finally feel like I am in a good place in my life again. Maybe for the first time in about ten years. I am in school, working, taking care of myself and my home, and, of course, I have Dave, who makes it all a little easier. I may not be juggling it all perfectly, but I think I am getting better at it a little bit at the time.

Does anyone else have this kind of problem with follow-through? How do other people deal with making sure they follow through, and cleaning up the messes when they don't

Constantly. And even worse, I have this repeating cycle wherein I screw something up, get all hardassed on myself about how This Time I'm Going To Write EVERYTHING Down, Damn It, and then when can't keep up with the level of detail in the hardassed system, I find that I still haven't gotten whatever it was done, plus I get extra guilt and self-flagellation out of the transaction. Yay fun.

What helps me:

• saying no to things -- which does leave you out of some fun projects, but if it's too much pressure on you, it isn't going to be fun anyway. Also, the saying "no" is hard in itself -- there's the "shit, she's gonna hate me" factor if it's a friend, and the "they're gonna think I'm not pulling my weight" factor at work, and the "everyone's talking about it and I'm gonna be a killjoy with nothing in to talk about with them" factor for something like a group exchange. Try saying no to *one* thing you'd otherwise do today. Or, better, try saying "it depends" to *everything* -- never say "yes" to anything until you've said "I'm going to have to check my calendar before I commit to it". People won't hate you for that, just as long as you do actually check your calendar and get back to them. (And, yes, I've forgotten that last step more often that I want to admit. I have to make explicit notes to remember to do so, and if that looks dorky, so what.)

• fixing my lists -- instead of giving myself crap for not remembering to record every minute of what I do, or for not doing what I did write down, I focused instead on making it a list of things it's actually possible to *do*. A list item that says "Thanksgiving" makes me stare at it and say, "ack! where in the hell do I start with that?!" before going off to cry. On the other hand "look up the cranberries-and-port recipe I used last year - maybe on epicurious?" is small enough and specific enough that I can do it on autopilot. The keys for me are to start everything on the list with a verb (as the scary productivity wonks would put it, list doable actions, not things. As I put it, "Thanksgiving" is not a verb); and to break things down so much that even if it's something nasty and distasteful, I can get it done in 30 seconds. And yes, this leads to bigger lists than in my "I Must Write Down Everything" days, but they're lists that I could hand to a reasonably trained monkey, and that means I can do it even if I don't have caffeine. Crossing off tons of really explicit and totally mindless 30-second jobs is still crossing things off. What you need to do to follow through -- whether it's "email to say that I can't do the project" or "email to get the details about the next step I need to do in the project" or "schedule 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to work on the project" can be on there just fine, if you're looking at it as a small chunk of doable stuff, not something that marks you as a horrible person.

• Keeping my inbox empty. Work email is the worst for this, but other email, other forms of mail, calls, meeting notes, and any other way that more stuff to do gets added to your commitments, all count as inboxes. I am a total hardass about this, because if I try to keep only a screenful of stuff in my inbox (which is common advice), I'm back to 1000 messages before I know it, and that's way too many to know at a glance whether I've forgotten to deal with one of them. It's empty or nothing. This doesn't mean that I have to deal with everything the moment it comes up -- that's a whole other way to drown. But it does mean that I've put at least the first little 30-second step on the list if it's something I need to actually do something about, or filed where I know I can find it again if there's information I may actually need later, or read it and smiled and said "awwww" if it's a nice LJ comment that I'm very happy to get but (continued...)

( continues...) I don't need to have hanging around in my inbox for years to come. With email, I can also forward things to myself with notes attached -- if I've responded by email, I've got the response right there; but if I followed up some other way, I tend to lose track of whether I did anything or not. So I send myself a dorky little note that says "talked to her about iPod video formats on 11/2" or "paid in full 10/30". That way, I can file both the original and what I did about it together, and GET 'EM OUT OF MY FRAKKIN' INBOX. If it's in the inbox, it hasn't been dealt with yet. If it's not, it may not be done, but it's in the chain.

• Life hacks. There was a good article on this in the NYT magazine a week or two back, which I'd suggest starting with -- basically, it's a (what? movement? concept? bunch of cool blogs that feed off each other?)... a thing. A very geek-friendly thing, about making and sharing tricks and systems and tools to make your life more manageable and user-friendly and (ack) productive.

I've tried the everything-must-be-tracked-and-recorded approach, and it made things worse by ratcheting up my anxiety. I've tried the ADD-support-group, you-are-wonderful-and-creative-and-not-an-idiot! approach, and it pretty much made me want to barf in addition to not fixing anything. And I'm just starting to fix a lot of really old habits, and I still screw up all the damned time. And that's where remembering that I'm human comes in. Which probably ought to be a bullet-point on the list.

• Remember that you're human.

With all of this, start with what you can. One "no", or one inbox. I've just dumped a lot of information on you, but don't think it's even possible to do all of it at once, nor that I'd dream of recommending you do so. I'm not even going to say "you must read this book!" or "try this system" or whatever -- you can do all that (and you can feel free to contact me -- my bookmark list is bigger every day) when you're ready to.

And always feel free to ask for support -- here, in LJ, by email, whatev. This is one of the things I'm worst at. Don't be me.

Constantly. And even worse, I have this repeating cycle wherein I screw something up, get all hardassed on myself about how This Time I'm Going To Write EVERYTHING Down, Damn It, and then when can't keep up with the level of detail in the hardassed system, I find that I still haven't gotten whatever it was done, plus I get extra guilt and self-flagellation out of the transaction. Yay fun.

Amy is me.

Oh! And a good thing this year.

Mawwiage.

Also, getting my brain rewired, finally.

Catch up post.

{{Aimee}} I’m sorry for your loss. It sounds like he waited for you to be with him.

Brenda’s sister is better off without the jerk.

{{Betsy}} Oh my. Quick resolution ~ma on the eye. Alas, there is no quick resolution on teacher and homework issues. Sigh.

Nora! Go you, and congratulations.

The Walnut/Parm slash was quite timely since cheese ravioli is on the menu at Casa Holt tonight.

And yay for vw breathing and PCPs who write angry letters, and suzi's lovely day. Boo for concussions and migraines and headaches and other assorted pains.

Can’t say it any better than Deena.

I thought it would be reassuring to mention one really nifty thing that happened to each of us this year.

I sold my unused back yard for a really big chunk of coin which relieved much financial tension.

Does anyone else have this kind of problem with follow-through? How do other people deal with making sure they follow through, and cleaning up the messes when they don't?

Alas, I suffer from this as well. Worse yet, I also have a huge defensive streak when called on it. About the only thing that helps me at all is list making and prioritizing. In my face desktop lists.

Give ‘em hell in DC Ginger, and/or have fun.

Fay, it’s absolutely not too late. You can find the survey here

Oh good, because I missed it for obvious reasons.

Good thing: Novel's finished.

Wow, that is a very good thing.

Also, thanks amych for the wonderful detail on the procrastination demon slaying report.

thanks amych for the wonderful detail on the procrastination demon slaying report.

Speaking of blogs, 43 Folders can be a little self-congratulatory at times, but they have interesting things to say about efficiency and anti-procrastination. They're much of the reason I've retooled how I send business e-mails.

I should go shower.

thanks amych for the wonderful detail on the procrastination demon slaying report.

I forgot to say marking both of amych's posts for future reference.

Some of the 43F stuff on business emails made me think of you, ita -- I'm not sure why; or maybe it's just that you said something here about it at around the same time the matter was being discussed there.

Anyway, they're a little too prone to the one-true-notebook error, but they turned me on to quicksilver, and so I am their willing slave.