How to organize a week's worth of work

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I am soliciting advice - please give advice. You do not have to coddle me when giving advice. This problem has been life long due to poor executive functioning skills.

I have one more week of time off from work. I want to dedicate time to my garden. I start too many garden projects and don't have time to finish them all and that doesn't include regular maintenance.

I can only work 2 hours a day in the garden due to the day becoming too hot to work outside.

I have 7 major garden areas.

I can spend 10 hours next week on the garden. 2 hours per day, Monday through Friday.

Do you think I should pick, for example, one area of the garden and work on it exclusively, with the thought that at least one garden area will get done well?

Or pick one garden area for each day and get the urgent tasks done for each area?

OR, dedicate the week to one particular major task, such as getting rid of the invasive weeds. (they are just flowering now and if I get them now, it will prevent them from seeding into next year.)

Or make your own suggestion.

All input is appreciated. You never know when one idea, or several, will open up new avenues!

Hm this sounds like a math problem in a textbook (will there be a test? ) .

Do you have time estimates for each of the 7 sections? Are they all the same amount of time to complete, or various times?

(Disclaimer: I know nothing about gardening)
I tend to prefer to go task to task, competing 1 task before moving on to the next one, unless it's more efficient to complete steps within those tasks across the board.

Good points Aurora. I don’t know how much time it would take to accomplish either goal on any given section.

And, I tend to be a poor judge of how long a task will actually take.

So whatever the suggestions might be, they will be based on incomplete data.

Yes I can't say that I would be likely to know how long tasks take me either.

For this decision I would base it on what you want to get out of it (since I believe this is for your own enjoyment). So if you have some sections that you would get extra joy out of viewing from your window or deck, those could be prioritized. Or if you want to get the satisfaction of getting the most sections done as possible, you could push to complete each section before moving on to the next one. Or if you would get more satisfaction out of having all 7 sections 90% done, and it wouldn't stress you out to think about the remaining steps once the week is over, then that's another option to consider.

I would get rid of the weeds as a priority.

I'd really have to see your garden. Long-term, I think you should focus on building super-healthy soil and crowding the weeds out. Short-term, do what seems fun and satisfying. You might feel better by just retuning some plots to nature to reduce the chores to manageable numbers.
When hot weather is a problem, I just take cooling breaks as necessary, with shade, fan, and iced drinks.

I would work from left to right.. it makes it simpler and easier to have momentum

skip all the things "you think you ought to" do
- so much gardening is still peer pressure and status signalling

clean up the patches before planting, if you dont put something in rightaway it can wait

I personally have a hard time to focus so 10 hours of work would not work for me. I find it better for me to just do a little bit of work every day.

A whole week of gardening?
Get rid of those weeds before they take over!
And if this task takes less time than expected you can do whatever you feel like as a reward!

Wow! I am so impressed by the great suggestions.

@dear_one, my garden does integrate with the natural environment around it. I try for what is sometimes called a forest garden, permaculture and/or gardening by guilds. The point is to provide food for my table and to work within the limits of the environment here.

For many weeds, I do a chop and drop method which leaves the nutrients in the soil. Best done before the weeds flower and reproduce.

My soil is terrible. I have been working on improving it for about 10 years, but it all just dissolves into the Florida sand. Were I rich, I would build raised beds and put quality soil into them.

I like all the ideas and will think about them over the weekend. I love the idea of working left to right! It appeals to my coping mechanisms.

I like the idea of doing what I wish and enjoying it. This appeals to me to me because I can so rarely do it.

I’d like to get something accomplished so I can look at it with satisfaction.

Thank you all so much for responding!

I got a lot of good suggestions and after reading the above, a lot of thoughts about gardening and it was so exciting to have some input and I thought of all kinds of things I would write in a response, and then, after some hours, I realized that no one is really interested in all the garden details. Then I realized this was, perhaps, my special interest. I have had trouble identifying the "special interest" category for me.

If you want to see a photo of my first guild, here is the gardening thread:

Guild 1

It also took me several hours to realize what some people were saying. dear_one was suggesting I try to cut down on the amount of gardening due to my age and difficulty in keeping up. Yes. Right. It will probably come to that. In the meantime, I have been working on replacing annuals with perennials and more tropicals rather than try to reproduce a temperate garden.

And treven was reminding me that gardening is never done and I should not get into the trap of considering my week a failure because I did not "finish."

And Mrs. Peel told me to take care of the invasive weeds first and my first thought was "if I do that, I won't get anything else done!" Then I realized, if I choose just one section, I can get rid of the weeds in just one section.

These are all problems with executive functioning and I get bogged down in it at lot. Once again, thank you.