Why Only 3 Things to Accomplish?

I thought of adding more, and still do.  However, 3 seemed just right.  I can start my day and focus on those first 3 items. I can always replace entries that I complete in the morning when I review my mid-day reminder, if I think that's necessary.  How does it work for you?

Had a Better Day Today

Sometimes I get pretty good at catching thoughts before they get our of hand.  Today I did that for most of the day.  Some of the things that helped were reviewing my entries in the app and getting on top of things quickly.  I think that latter item was a real benefit today.  Getting on top of things quickly puts a real damper on my forecasts of doom and gloom.  If those thoughts don't pick up a head of steam then they tend to be manageable.  Something for me to keep in mind.

All That Forecasting for Naught

Nothing went bad today.  I had myself wound up regarding a meeting and an anticipated interaction.  I used my new entries in the app to counter these thoughts, which helped reduce their impact on my mood.  When the meeting took place, things went fairly well.  Actually, they went very well compared to my forecast.  And that anticipated interaction?  Never happened.  I received an e-mail from that person and realized the anticipated interaction was nothing but fantasy.  Things went well today, like they typically do.

Getting ready for work tomorrow

I'm feeling stressed due to the interactions I'll be having tomorrow.  I'll work the new entries a bit more tonight and see if that helps.  A lot of the stress is due to forecasting conflict.  In the morning I'll "listen" to my reminder and review My Experiences.  One last thing I'll do tonight is set some goals for the morning.  It will be an interesting day.

Did You Know...

That if you choose to buy the paid version, your data entered into the free version will be transferred to the paid version?  Even though they are technically 2 different apps, because they have have the same creator and are signed with the same key, they can share data.  Well, almost.  The free version is not designed to get data from the paid version.  What are the differences?  The paid version allows up to 30 entries in each of the tools: Observations, Event Log, Cost Benefits, Essays, and Ideal Self.  You can also back up your data to your SD card, and of course there is no time limit.

Had a Good Day Today

The good part was related to catching myself keeping some distortions in check.  Most notably a jumping to conclusions related to a person not doing what I expected them to do.  I'm slowly moving away from the idea that people should behave the way I expect them to.  Reading that seems kind of silly to me right now, but I have to admit that I do think that way.  I'm now realizing that thinking people should behave the way they think they should behave is better for my emotional health.  I'll work this a bit more and see how it "fits."

The Other New Essay

The other day I showed the essay I've been working on related to tasks.  Here's the one I've been working on related to interactions.  Both are still in progress.  As my entries develop, they sometime take a turn and end up with a different meaning than I originally intended.  With this one, I'm trying to develop an essay that will help defeat those forecasts of conflict in regards to pending interactions.

Essay Title: Stress and People
Interactions can take different forms.  Some are stressful and some are not.  Think about each form and which form the day's interactions are like to take.

Dysfunctional in which people might put eachother down and prevent decisions and focus on the negatives.Confrontational in which people challenge each other to produce a better product.Neutral in which people listen to each other and are cordial.Synergistic in which people infuse energy and build on each other's ideas.

Dysfuctionals can be stressful.  Lookout for should statements and labels.Confrontationals can be stressful.  These may seem worse than they are.  Lookout for jumping to conclusions in regards to the other person's intent, should statements and labels.

Did Pretty Good Today

Had a big meeting with a customer today.  I brought Starbucks coffee to the meeting in one of those traveling coffee boxes.  While waiting for the coffee to be brewed I took the time to review my experiences and my new entries, in particular the one related to interacting with people.  That turned out to be the only chance I had to address my condition because once I got into work things started happening pretty quickly.  "Things" means checking and responding to e-mail, getting set up for the meeting, and conducting the meeting.  The meeting lasted all day, and went very well.  I'll reflect back on the meeting this evening and how the interactions went.  I think there were some good experiences I want to reflect on.

Sharing a new Essay

I mentioned that I started an essay the other day, and then split it into two different essays.  Here's what I have so far for the essay related to tasks.  It's something I reviewed and updated this morning and will continue to review and update.  It's a work in progress.  My goal is to reduce my early morning stress and forecasts of gloom and doom.

Essay Title: Stress and Tasks
Tasks can take different forms.  Think about each form and which form each of the day's tasks is likely to follow.

Quagmire in which the task can get bogged down due to unforeseen issues.
Predictive in which things go generally as planned.
Surprising in which things go better than planned.
Delayed in which something pop up requiring work to stop for a short period.

Most tasks do not turn into quagmires.
Most tasks are either predictive of surprising.  So why the stress?
Delayed tasks are not uncommon.  Do your best to plan around them.

Continued working on that Essay I started the other Night

I picked up where I left off.  I had captured some thoughts related to forecasts that lead to stress for me.  The thoughts were grouped into things related to interacting with people and things related to tackling a task. I developed each thought a bit more, and then decided to split the essay into two different essays.  One focused on interacting with people and one focused on tackling a task.  I copied the whole text and started a new essay, pasting the copied text into the body.  I then deleted the part I didn't want and developed each a bit more.  For the people interactions, I capture 4 ways a pending interaction can go.  Only one had people being very difficult. The other three were either neutral or good.  Reviewing this helped alleviate some stress early in the morning.  The other essay has a similar flow, capturing 4 ways a task might go.  I think these need a little more work, but I like them.

Working the App Today

Been working with the app today.  This is going to be a hectic week.  I have a customer coming in and need to get the project moving forward.  Things are in place, such as having charge lines for people to charge their time to, but we still need a couple of more authorizations before we can all begin working.  All I can do is what I've been doing.  However, there are all those pesky thoughts coming up.  We should have had all the authorizations weeks ago.  We'll never get things signed off.  This meeting is going to be a scream fest.  I have no data to justify any of those thoughts, except the should statement.  However, in regards to that should statement, I know we're working with a new system and I know the person working on my authorization is doing his best.  Regarding the other thoughts, based on what I've experienced so far those thoughts are not true.  It's good to capture this in my blog.  Doing this helps me gather my thoughts and move through this stress.

Did you know...

Every now and then I post a few comments about the color scheme of Mood Sentry.  The blue fading to yellow represents going from blue to sunny. I know, that's kind of silly but I like it.  The black background came about because it takes me a while to formulate my thoughts and I figured a black background would use up less battery power during my thought process.  The text color is not quite white, but a 75% white to help save battery power too.  Just little things I thought of during the development process.

Didn't Sleep Well Last Night

I kept thinking about work and what I need to get done, and kept forecasting conflict and quagmires.  I had this idea developing in my head involving an essay to capture a couple of things.  One would relate to interactions and how they can take several forms: conflict, neutral, and agreeable.  The other would relate to activities and how they can take longer than expected (quagmire), as long as expected, and event shorter than expected.  The idea being that reviewing this might be helpful at time.  I kept ruminating on this concept and finally grabbed my phone and started an essay.  I didn't capture the whole thing, just enough such that I can pick it up again and develop it further.  I was able to get back to sleep after that.

Worked a Bunch of Entries Today

Not sure what's going on these days.  Been feeling a lot of work related stress and working the app hard.  It's been helping.  I've had he app on my phone for over a year now and have a lot of entries.  I spent time reviewing most of them today.  It's interesting to see how some things keep popping up.  I've learned more about myself because of all this, and perhaps I'll find some breakthrough thought that will help me defeat these distorted thoughts.  Right now, the app does a pretty good job of helping me manage my condition.

Things Eased Up Today

I think it was simply moving forward on one of my work challenges.  Making progress on something can really help my mood.  Yes, I used the app in the morning, at lunch, and this evening, which helped too.  However, it's accomplishing something that had the most impact.  I have an entry or two related to getting things off my plate and how that can improve my mood.  Even accomplishing a small thing can help. That's something I loose track of at times and need to remind myself every now and then.

Another Rough Day

It seems like I have a lot of things on my plate, some going well and some not so well.  I think I'm letting the not so well ones hijack my mood.  I hit the app at lunchtime and reviewed My Experiences and several entries.  I have several entries related to work and the stuff I'm going through these days.  It good how the app builds up over time and has helpful suggestions.  All or Nothing thinking, over-generalizations, and probably some should statements too.  I'm getting better at recognizing them and countering them.

Had a Rough Day Today

A new program (for me) seems to have problem after problem.  I think I'm getting into emotional reasoning with this one.  Yes, it does have some pretty tough issues to resolve, but it also has some interesting points.  I think I'm losing track of the interesting points in my zeal to fix what's wrong with this program.  I'll think about this.  I may start a new entry.  I'm filling up my entries and probably can consolidate a couple or even delete one of the older ones.  Sometimes I have a couple of entries that are different "takes" on the same item.

How I started my Day

Here's some stuff that came up reviewing My Experiences this morning...
All or Nothing - regarding the party last night, I invited a people from different groups that my wife interacts with.  Because only people from one of those groups showed up, I had these brief thoughts of failure.  I attributed this to all or nothing thinking (if all groups not represented, then I failed) and countered this thought with my wife's comments that it was a good party and the fact that everyone there had a great time.
Jumping to Conclusions - I kept wondering if some people didn't show because I offended them in some way.  I would start feeling anxious at this thought and try to figure out what I did and how I could remedy it.  I really have no evidence of such an offense which is how I countered this thought.
Magnification - back to thinking about the people who didn't show up, I had a tendency to magnify the importance of those no-shows.  Because my wife had a great time, and got to spend time with some friends she hadn't seen in a while, the fact that some people didn't show really wasn't that big of a deal.
Should Statements - Ate too much, didn't have all the people I invited showing up.  I should have eaten less, I should have followed through better on the invitations.  Actually, one day of over eating is not bad, and perhaps I would have slept better had I not eaten so much, but so what?  We had a great time, the food was great, and the company was great.  A better follow up on the invites?  Maybe things would have been different, maybe they would have been worse.  The fact is we had a great time with who showed up.  Good enough.
So, this is how I started my day.  Battling some residual thoughts from last night.  Reviewing my experiences provides a somewhat structured way to address thoughts like these and mitigate them.

Hosted a Surprise Party for my Wife

This evening I hosted a surprise party for my wife.  She cleared her special education II the other month and I felt it needed to be celebrated.  I've never organized an event like this and found myself addressing multiple distortions.  I think my tendency toward all or nothing thinking had a lot to do with these thoughts.  Planning this out, I would forecast that this event would be a bust.  What would make it a bust?  Not having everything go as planned.  My entry in "My Experiences" for all or nothing helped with that thought.  I was able to convince myself that everything doesn't need to go as planned to make the party a success.  This evening we didn't have all the people I expected to show, actually show up.  My mood would start drifting lower because people I expected to show did not show, however, I was able to catch these thoughts and challenge them with real-time data.  When I took the time to observe the group, everyone was in fact having a good time.  My wife had a great time, and that was the most important thing.  This is a good experience to capture.  Things didn't go as planned, but things worked out well anyway.  I'll jot down a couple of notes and capture this in an Event entry tomorrow.  My phone's on the charger now and I need to get some sleep.  Social events wear my out.

App Notes

Sometimes I post little things related to using the app.  For example, when a reminder goes off, after reviewing the reminder you can get back to the home key via the menu button.  On the menu bar that appears, there is a home icon that takes you to the home page.
Double tapping in a text field kicks you into the editor.  It's the same a tapping the customize button, but I prefer to double tap.
Check out the hints.  They may be different, depending on the page you are on.

Working Multiple Entries

I have two or three entries that I've been working on these days, all different takes on all or nothing thinking.  I'm digging into the concept of all or nothing thinking and how that may actually be the distortion that drives my forecasting.  It's tough for me for some reason, to capture the gist behind the thoughts that drive the mood.  However, it just seems that I may have these all or nothing automatic thoughts, such as people will either support me or reject me, i'll either be a success or a failure.  In this last case, success would be the result of getting everything off my plate (completed).  Anyway, what I do is try to capture the thought and record it.  Sometimes it seems that the thought disappears before I can record it. Almost like it's afraid of being recorded.  I'll keep working on this.

Didn't Sleep Well Last Night

I kept ruminating on forecasts of conflicts and failure for today.  There have been a couple of times when I had trouble sleeping that I used the app to capture what was on my mind and challenge those thoughts.  When I did that, I was able to get back to sleep.  It would have been good to try that last night.  For some reason, I didn't think of doing that.  Perhaps documenting this might help me remember to try the app the next time I have thoughts keeping me awake.  As a side note, things went pretty well today.  Some things went well, most were neutral, and a couple could have been better.  No significant conflict was encountered.  These really were distorted thoughts.

Sometimes when I review My Experiences...

I blow through them fairly quickly, and sometimes I don't.  Going through them fairly quickly is OK for me, because I usually capture the most likely distortions that may manifest during my day.  This helps.  Going through the list slowly and deliberately helps too.  This is because I can pick up more subtle ways that distortions can manifest.  Most recently is how all or nothing thinking may be influencing things more than I thought.  It may be driving my forecasts of conflict and lost free time.  I'm capturing this in my new entry.  I know, I keep saying I'll share it sometime.  Just not tonight.

Worked the new entry today

I think it's developing into something useful.  Sometimes my entries take a turn in an entirely different direction than the one I start off in.  That's because the more I think about the thoughts relating to a situation, the better I understand what's going on.  Writing thoughts and situations down is a critical part of my process.  The app helps me by providing persistent access to these entries, so that I can work them when the mood strikes.

Worked the app a bit differently today

Rather than reviewing my experiences first, I started a new entry in my Observations tool.  I had a thought that I wanted to capture and was concerned that I'd forget if I just jumped right into reviewing My Experiences.  This thought is in its nascency, and has to do with the inertia I experience getting things started.  I'm still trying to really capture the symptom.  Perhaps I'll share it later, when it is more developed.

Wondering Where to Start?

Try starting with My Experiences.  That's how I started this whole thing.  I just wanted to get a better grasp of the distortions and how they manifest in my life.  I then created my own list of mitigations.  It wasn't as structured as it is in the app.  It was simply a sheet of paper that had different scenarios that may happen on any given day, the thoughts that might pop up, and some counter thoughts.  Creating my own examples helped me to better understand the concept of cognitive distortions.

Not sure if its the app or biochemical

I'm feeling better today than I have been.  The situation at work really hasn't changed much.  I have been working the app pretty religiously over the past couple of days, which I know has helped.  As I've stated in previous posts, I have been reviewing my experiences and some entries in the morning, at lunchtime, and in the evening.  However, I've also been sleeping better because the heat wave has waned and sometimes I just get in a funk that simply fades away.  Thus, I can't be sure it is the app that's helping me feel better, but I'm sure it had something to do with my improvement.

Was Pressed to work the app today

Very busy at work, which is just the time I really need to work the app.  I found the time this morning to review My Experiences with the known day's events in mind.  There will always be pop up stuff, which often have similar patterns and can actually be planned for, at least in terms of the thoughts I generate.  Preparing in the morning helped.  I didn't make the time at lunch to review anything because I was trying to finish up a design I've been working and need to get off my plate.  I did manage to make the time tonight to review some entries and reflect back on the day.  That reflection helped.  I'm feeling overwhelmed and like I can't get anything done.  Reflecting back on the day made me realize that I did get several things done and that design is just about off my plate.  Set a couple of goals for tomorrow and am calling it a day.  Good night.

What would you think of a half price sale?

I'm just wondering if this would spark any movement from the trail to the paid version.  The current price is 3.99, so what if I dropped it to 1.99 for the month of October?  Just wondering.  Regarding using the app, I've been hitting it hard these days.  I've got a lot going on at work, and it feels like things are all going to come down at one and I'll be inundated.  I'm able to use the app pretty well to identify specific thoughts that are driving my mood, and then identify some mitigating thoughts.  Good stuff.

Sometimes I notice improvements

These improvements can be subtle.  Today, I didn't forecast conflict and lost time as much as I usually do, and when I did the thoughts were less upsetting.  It feels as these thoughts have lost influence over my mood, at least for today.  The thoughts seemed the same but the impact was definitely less.  The big thing for me was that I recognized the thoughts and noted the lessened impact.  I know these thoughts are distortions and not destiny.  I think I'm recognizing this on a deeper level.  Let's see if this continues.  I'm working the app hard these days, making sure I take the time for a good review of my experience and a few entries in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening.  Good stuff.

Made Sure I Worked the App Today

Based on yesterday's post, you can guess that I really need to attack my thoughts these days.  Mostly work that drives my negative thoughts, but some home stuff too.  The trick for me is to think ahead to my day and anticipate what will probably bubble up.  It's good for me to think about things like overgeneralizations and emotional reasoning in the morning in preparation for my day.  Does this make sense to you?