Throwing the Dice

Looking up at our house from our mailbox

A year ago, a friend introduced me to a wonderful thing she was doing called WIPGO. It was a sort of work-in-progress bingo on a Facebook group of the same name. The idea was to take a whiteboard, draw out the squares of a bingo card on it, number them, and then fill them with the names of projects that you had in flight and needed to finish. I was very enthusiastic and took a chalk board, drew up the card, and started putting in all of my unfinished projects (I alluded to some of them in yesterday's post). There were too many for the card, so I doubled up on the little ones. There were still too many, but I figured that that's what 2024 would be for! Anyhoo, each month the moderator of the FB group called out two numbers, and the goal was to work on the projects in the corresponding squares for a certain number of hours each week for the month. There was also a prize for completing a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line. 

It was already March when I found out about the group, and even last year was too crazy for me to follow a plan, so the board languished. Last week I hung it in the sewing room and erased all of the projects. I would like to start it up again, but as I haven't even found all of my handwork WIP's--much less unpacked them, and my life is too too fluid and unsettled right now anyway, so I regretfully decided not to do it this year. 

(Side note: I also decided not to get chicks, plant a garden, or keep bees this year. Those are next year's projects. Instead I am going to concentrate on cleaning up the tackroom/horse shelter/corral area, moving Turi (my Appaloosa/quarter horse gelding) here, and getting him a herd mate or two. Equine management for the first time in my life is going to be intense enough.) 

Though I am not going to do the formal WIPGO, this morning I had a glimmer of an idea about integrating the randomness of it into building a retirement structure AND getting sh*t done! A big part of the difficulty in retirement is the lack of structure in your time--the days are all the same, and hours mostly don't have any significance either. When I was "working", my schedule was determined by outside forces--meetings, deadlines and commitments, what to leave in, what to leave out (extra bonus nachos if you catch the reference in that last bit). I don't think I'm unusual in rebelling against forcing a structure upon myself just to have one. I want one that's productive, satisfying, and fun. I don't want to go to the gym everyday at 10:00. I have NEVER wanted to go to the gym everyday at 10:00, and I resist the idea that that is the kind of schedule I need now. 

So back to using the idea of WIP bingo and daily life... a routine is already organically forming a bit in my days. I start the morning with coffee, sometimes in bed. I do a little admin work (email, schedule contractors, research things I need to know like how to manually open the garage door when there doesn't seem to be a pull cord--stuff like that). Then I blog and do a little housework--in either order. Then I have a couple of hours before lunch to work on a project. That's where the randomness of a WIP--like-thing can come in. I have a list of about six household unpacking and organization projects that I need to complete. I have been struggling getting traction on them. Let's be honest--I've been struggling getting started on them. I'd rather whine about it here on the blog. But no more! Today I am going to write six imminent projects on my whiteboard. There are more than six, but I will just pick six. I will assign a number to each. Then each day I will either pick one (if I have a strong preference), or I will roll a die, and then I will spend two hours working on the project that came up on the roll. Heck, I might even add something in like "take a long walk with the dog". 

The projects will stay on the board until completed, and as soon as they are completed, they will be replaced so there is always something next to each number. Six is an excellent number as it means there is one day a week with no scheduled task (days that I have other things on the schedule count for the project that day), and I think I'll stretch and say I can take the day off any day I want--it doesn't have to be a specific day of the week.

I was going to continue with the afternoon and evening schedule, but this post is already long, and I am itching to make my new WIP dice board.