I'm struggling a bit with focus and output, or at least more than I feel I should be. I've done two prep tests so far, and while I'm not quite through all the material, I'm still below where I think I should be at this point.

I've also struggled a bit with organizing, and also with getting some tech things moved forward. I think what makes this a bit harder is not that I don't know what needs to be done, but rather I've had points where its a bit challenging to actually do the bits that need to be done, regardless of the difficulty of doing them. I have had a bit better traction lately.

One strategy that has helped me is understanding I don't need to do 100% of something to make progress. In the past, I've often spent effort on something until I've gotten stuck, but I'll spend a lot of focus getting iit to that point. Now, I'll give myself some reasonable constraints, like "get 20% of the total needed done", which might mean about 5 sessions to get something done, but it also means I can spend an hour or so on something.

This takes away some of the guilty feelings on not doing enough, and lets me work on other less important stuff as well. This means I get to work on more things, and means I feel more productive by having moved the bar on a bunch of items.

This has allowed me to schedule some time for Windows learning stuff, as well as gotten me thinking about my lab and how my office is currently organized. Having that mental space to explore and be creative has me approaching things differently.

I'm hopinv this will spur better methods and systems, rather than my previous tactic of trying to "weed for the summer in one session", which simply isn't effective. Here is to a number of weeding sessions!