Who doesn’t read Brain Pickings?
(I am assuming  you do. If you do not read Brain Pickings, choose to do so – it is always worth the read and your time.)

What motivates our investment in goals and planning for the future, much of the time, isn’t any sober recognition of the virtues of preparation and looking ahead. Rather, it’s something much more emotional: how deeply uncomfortable we are made by feelings of uncertainty. 
– Oliver Burkeman

I enjoyed very much Popova’s post about the book The Antidote by author Oliver Burkeman, which is now a new addition to my nightstand, carry-with-me read that I am sure I will later share my pondering.

If you do read Brain Pickings regularly, then you may recall the quote from Maria Popova’s February 2014 post Stop Making Plans: How Goal-Setting Limits Rather Than Begets Our Happiness and Success.

When I read Popova’s post back in February, it was after an occasional activity that has been affectionately called 3-3-What-What-One-Two – a kind of mash-up of Franklin Covey’s 7 Habits and David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD®). I would meet with friends at least twice a month. Our group’s objective?

To share, support, and customize our
professional and personal life management tools, practices, philosophies, and
strategies intended to make our days and nights flow well.

Since February, I have begun more to think differently about my relationship with my calendar, with my goals, with choices of how I spend my time, and in general, my relationship with time.

Last Friday was my last day at a traditional job. I quit.

Anchor Day

It has only been a week since quitting my job, and yet I am continuing to do a weekly routine (which I have had for many years) that I call anchor day. Anchor day is the once-a-week, one to two hours (usually over coffee or tea) that I spend solo with my calendar and my to-do list. I review my past week, journal what I have been doing and how I have been feeling, schedule what’s coming up (firm or tentative plans), and update my to-do list.

When I was with cubeopolis and part of the 3-3-What-What-One-Two group, as part of my anchor day, I revisited my goals to make sure activities I chose to do were in line with my goals – a 7 Habits spillover.

Needless to say, at a minimum, regularly occurring cubeopolis meetings were added to my calendar. And as I discovered on this anchor day, July 2014 events were added. (Of course they were.)

Calendar Refresh

With Quo Vadis, my planners of choice, I have a weekly calendar and a recently acquired a daily calendar, which is evolving into a bit of a diary – part journal, scheduler, and tracker.

As I am continuing to settle into my discovering and creating what’s next, my anchor day remains.

“Uncertainty is where things happen.
It is where the opportunities —
for success, for happiness, for really living
— are waiting.”
– Martha Nussbaum

Today’s anchor day is the day I erased cubeopolis commitments to make room for and to welcome … uncertainty.

So do tell … What is your relationship with uncertainty?