I was sitting here in my lab this morning and reflecting on all the things I want to do in it. The thing about getting things done is they don’t get done unless you actually take the time to do them. A book will happily sit unopened on your bookshelf for your entire life if you don’t take the time at some point to pick it up and read it.

In this light I thought perhaps I might stand more of a chance of actually completing some of my projects if I put some structure around getting them done. To that end I have one specific activity to do for each day of the week:

• circuit day (make a Maxitronix circuit or similar)
• programming day (write some code, pick a project, there are lots)
• old book day (review and document an old book)
• Xbox day (recap an Xbox, or work on an otherwise broken one)
• writing day (write something, e.g. work on my book, a long form blog post, etc)
• new book day (read and document a new book)
• holiday! (watch a movie! play a game!)

On circuit day and Xbox day I will make a video of the activity and publish on In The Lab With Jay Jay. The outputs from the other activities are not video but a lot of that will end up on the web somewhere too.

The sub-pattern is:

• Video
• Writing
• Reading

I repeat that twice in one week and then give myself a day off.

Traditionally I’m very bad when it comes to having structure in my life, so I can only hope that this attempt to introduce some structure actually works out… wish me luck!