Recap of today - 11 March 2025

TODAY WAS A GREAT DAY

Today was an insanely productive day, from the get-go. My normal routine involves my Morning Pages first, followed by an hour, sometimes 90 minutes, on my stationary bike and elliptical machine.

Then we truly start the day.

I have a to-do list that I use to point myself to where I should start. As a manager, this involves mostly checking in with people. As the person controlling the purse strings, I’m called A LOT. Our business is both property management and farming. Which means there’s stuff to be done daily that needs some sort of cash.

Anyway, today’s agenda was mostly a catching up day. Catch up with the budget. Catch up with the work program. Catch up with company monthly taxes (deadline in Kenya for many employee related payments to the government are the 9th of the month.

MORNING PAGES INSIGHT

It all started at the Morning Pages; I had a revelation.

I started blogging years ago, before it became fashionable. And I always struggled with what to write. I’d have a super bright idea and start writing, and somewhere into paragraph 1, on the fourth or fifth sentence, I’d hit a super brick wall. Interest lost, rambling and not even interesting to me.

The next day, I’d do the same thing. Start writing about something I thought was interesting, but I’d give up. Maybe I wanted to write about my diet, extreme Keto, as close to being a carnivore that you can get. But I’d start by explaining what Keto is, explain the bad things that carbs (essentially glucose) can do to you, and why your body doesn’t need it.

Yawn, yawn.

Then I’d get motivated to write about how my lists (lists of everything) help in in organizing my life. And on the second or third sentence, never too far from the top of the blog, I’d hit another brick wall. This one suggesting that nobody cares about lists, and the audience already knows the basic stuff that I’m writing. About calendars, targets, blah, blah, blah.

Even I’d get bored just thinking about the tortuous effort it’s taking to write.

MORNING PAGES, IT’S ABOUT PAGES, NOT CONTENT

Why are Morning Pages so easy to write. I do it religiously every morning and I actually look forward to it. I can’t wait to sit at my desk with my notebook in front of me and start writing. I remember that when I started writing Morning Pages it wasn’t so easy. I’d write and write and write until my brain got tired. The next morning I’d do the same thing, and it was boring. Julia Cameron says use an A4 sheet and write 3 pages. I’d normally exceed the 3 pages and that’s where the lack of discipline came in.

What happened?

I did a Reddit search on the Morning Pages dilemma. Why are some people struggling and found that I was not alone. Some people struggle with the physical act of holding a pen for any length of time, and they opt to type their Morning Pages. I can tell you, writing with a pen and typing are NOT the same thing. I love writing with my hand, there’s a lot of truth of being more connected with the text you are writing, and the much slower pace is welcome. Your brain is normally a few thoughts ahead of where your hand is, much closer if you’re using a keyboard, but the writing does something special.

It edits since by the time you’ve finished the sentence, you’ve actually forgotten where your brain was going.

The other thing is that I needed to get a comfortable length that wasn’t too short and not too long. Just write so that I didn’t have to spend an hour each morning on the writing, and it wasn’t too short to be ineffective.

I found writers who said that 750 words was the sweet spot. Not for me. For me, 3 pages of A5 (a slightly smaller page than an A4) worked wonders. 

My handwriting is also small, and that led to very dense A4’s early on. The 3 pages of A5 are comfortably done within the 30 minutes I’ve allocated myself.

And here’s where it becomes interesting, since I’m aware of the end of the writing, it actually is way better than floundering on the page till my brain gets tired. No matter how interesting the writing is, I stop at the end of the third page. Even in the middle of a thought.

1000 WORDS

So, I hit on the idea to limit my blog ramblings to a word count. Initially thought 500 words would do it, but that’s too short. And after a bit of trial and error, I ended up where I am now.

So, what does this have to do with the greatness of today? Well, I decided to box everything into a slice of time. If it’s not done, step away and go ahead and move on to the next thing.

My meeting notes were taken and as soon as the time allocated for the meeting was over, I closed it. Didn’t ask anyone to stay and finish the few items that are left in the agenda. I took my to-do list and worked on a couple of items and discovered that my lists were always too ambitious. My to-do lists are like a never-ending list of everything that needs (whether it’s today or next year) my attention. And those items that are so low priority muddle up the list and I cannot figure out what I should be looking at.

Worse still, I cannot remember where I am in the list. So, the list was culled and those items that simply aren’t on today’s radar slunk back.

I took the budget that I’ve been looking at since January (with only a few items which have no meaning in March hanging on) and did a great job.

I also wrote two articles – who cares what they were about, point is, as soon as I got close to 1,000 words, I needed to feel closure.

It is all about TIMEBOXING and not caring about perfectionism in CONTENT.