jack: (Default)
For quite a long time I had quite a good system for post, after I set up a filing system a la David Allen's Getting Things Done. Basically, have a file for each company/org that sends you post. When you receive the post, put it straight into the file.

The secret is, if filing it is easy, then it's easy to just do, and if you're behind, you can file a bunch at once.

If there's stuff you need to DO, you can put that in a physical in-tray. Although I just filed it and used a virtual todo list instead.

But since I moved into this house I got behind. Mostly, I think, just that the filing cabinet slowly filled up, and then filing anything became a chore, and when my "willingness to file" fell below "amount of incoming" even a tiny %, then a backlog just slowly mounted up.

I had a few attempts, like separate files for "post to open", "post to process", "post to file". I used to be intimidated by post because I'd often have stuff I hadn't dealt with, and have urgent letters saying "you need to have done this by last year" (not because I had no money, but because I was bad at dealing with post). But one way or another it didn't help.

This weekend, I started a new set of files, basically the same but creating them new for stuff which is "current". And sorted most of the backlog. That was pretty easy. I found one or two important things I'd put aside. And nothing I'd forgotten I shouldn't have.

Because fortunately, my organisation was on top of things enough that a usual amount of reminders was more than enough to get me to do something.

In fact, I weirdly became someone who deals with important things, neither immediately, nor last minute, but a couple of weeks before the deadline, which is about perfect, and better than I ever expected to reach :)

PS.

At some point I need to go and throw out anything I don't need to keep from the old system to make more room. But that got less scary too, when I know realistically what I will need (bank statements, certificates) and what I won't need (all the extra bumf which comes in the envelopes)
jack: (Default)
It took me a long time to develop a normal amount of "doing necessary things". Partly I had problems getting started on things (from big projects to every day things like getting out of bed). Partly I resented learning a rote system that didn't fit what I prioritised, so I didn't learn a system of "do this amount of housework every day" routine that I might have benefited from. Partly I was very perfectionist, so it felt futile to do *some* when I still wasn't doing *all*

I've got a lot better in various ways. Partly I have built up routines for day-to-day stuff. I have through various different tricks/habits/self-therapy slowly de-mystified "getting started". But there's a lot I'd still like to improve on.

I used to survive by basically living a status quo that had terrible housework, and a lot of regular socialising, but almost none of what you might call "working toward things". So in some ways that worked well, but I didn't want to get to age 80 and discover that I still went to the pub twice a week, but had never achieved anything and still lived in a similar student-style flat to when I was in my early twenties. Although I mean, maybe I should have been happier with that trade off, but I wasn't. But because my brain is infested with counter-productive perfectionism, as soon as I started to get better at things, it felt like I needed to be getting better at things ALL THE TIME.

Ideally I'd have regular self-care time. And regular socialising with other people. And time for the creative hobbies I enjoy doing: writing, GMing roleplaying, designing board games, programming, etc. And time for self-improvement, time for self-therapy, learning to dress better, learning to be a more pleasant person to be around. And time for "we really should have done this at some point" chores. And now I'm adding to the list "activism" as the crises I'm living through have ever more impossible to ignore. And so on.

But that is... a lot. I probably *can't* do all of that. But I can't bring myself to officially decide not to bother on any of them.

I've been through several previous systems. Recently I've been trying out "no responsibilities sat" where I can do just nothing, or work on what I feel like, without feeling constrained by "what I feel like I should do" which often killed my motivation. And I added "overdue chores Sunday", not the entire day, but basically I'd try to do SOME chore/chores which had been lingering with me never finding time for it, without feeling guilt for whether it had been on the list for days or years.

I realised the reason those worked is that it didn't make so much difference if I did the self-care and chores a lot or a little, as long as there kept being SOME at a steady rate, but not so much they took over everything else, or so little that they never happened.

Partly, I made the effort to stop thinking of all the chores as "I'll catch up once and then I'll be a Functioning Adult TM" but instead, "if I do a little bit every week or so on necessary house-ownership care, or necessary body-having appointments, or buying things that we might need but were never urgent, then over time I will be mostly up to date on the important things". And new things will always arrive, but as long as the new stuff is added.

Now I'm seriously considering... should I do that for everything? Not so much have a dedicated day, as I don't know if I want to do all those things the same amount. But maybe have a shuffled list, where if I have some time, I can say, "pick one or two of these at random, work on one of those for a bit", to ensure, I keep doing SOME stuff on all of them.

What does everyone else do? Do you have a way of balancing so many demands? Or do you in practice live in a status quo of "if things keep going like this, then in 20 years I'll feel it went well", and responding to additional demands as they come up?
jack: (Default)
I've recently been experimenting with "no responsibility saturdays". I've toyed with similar things before, but partly I hadn't reached a point where the trade-offs were useful to me, and partly I think I tried variants that didn't draw the line on what to exclude in the right place.

Specifically, my rule is, I can do anything I feel like, be it collapsing in front of the TV, playing games with Liv, getting on with a hobby project, going out to socialise or walk, exercise, or catching up on a behind todo list. But stuff I *need* to do, I'll set aside time some other time, so I don't have anything I *have* to do.

Mostly, it's a rule that says I can ignore the voice in my head saying, "oh, but you really need to do X, you shouldn't do other stuff until you've done that". Which, well, maybe I should ignore that most of the time, The Voice isn't very good at choosing the right things to worry about. But I've always found it really hard to let go, and this helps.

It hasn't made that much difference to what I've actually been doing, I've done some social things I knew I would enjoy, I've enjoyed time with R, I've done tidying, I've done books and tv. But I've felt a *lot* more relaxed about it.

I guess "not have to do anything" is what weekends are supposed to be, and I just got the message late. But I always struggled with that: even when I didn't actually do much, it always felt like I *should* be doing something, that if I had time I should make the most of it by doing something really fun, or I should deal with one of hundreds of things I should "get to one day", or if I'm not doing that I should start a new project of some sort, etc, etc. I always felt like I had to do *everything*, so I tended to do *nothing*.

I had to get over several hurdles to get to the point where I could try this. Likely I will get to the point where I don't *need* to do it. But in the meantime it's been surprisingly helpful, not just for that day, the uplifted spirits have carried over to more of the week too.
jack: (Default)
I can't describe myself as someone who *doesn't* procrastinate, but I think, after a very long time of small improvements, I might have moved out of the worst of "having things I'm literally unable to do". Which was something was never sure if I'd achieve, although I was never easily able to think clearly about, because I didn't want to admit how bad the problem was, so I don't feel so much exhilaration as extremely cautious numb relief. Although I think I am more relaxed and able to enjoy things.

Thousands and thousands of thanks to my parents, and Liv who have been supportive and patient and helped incredibly much while I've had problems I'm not easily able to describe what's wrong or what would help (even if many people I know fight much worse problems).

I'd always wondered if I'd write a "how not to procrastinate" guide when I fixed it. Well, it turns out that it's not easily reducible to a set of simple steps that once you know what they are, it's easy, which was not exactly a surprise. But I guess I do have *some* advice.

A lot of it feels really fake in retrospect. Like, I got over some particular hang-up, and then later on thinking back, I couldn't easily reconstruct the state of mind I was when I had the problem. I remember what I did that helped, but I found it hard to believe that had really been necessary.

Which just shows, how *different* brains can be, and how hard it can be to get what's going on in someone else's brain, even when it feels like you would know.

So some of this series will be my best recollections of what worked at the time, before they fade further, and some will be my best interpretations of what was going on with the power of hindsight.

Tip #1: Don't be depressed

I realise that's sort of unhelpful. But seriously, that CAN help, in several ways.

If you're burning out on something, often taking a break can help. You need to figure out how much to take a break to recharge, and how much not to because that will just turn into never doing the thing. Do self care things, a break from responsibility (e.g. play a phone game, etc, ideally something absorbing but not something complicated enough you get sucked in long term), low-pressure human contact if that usually helps you, eat if you're hungry, get a hot drink, and enough water/squash/etc that you're hydrated.

If this is a long-term problem, consider if a therapist, life coach, etc, is an option available. Don't focus on "do I deserve this" -- that's the depression talking, generally speaking taking advantage of that sort of service HELPS it be available to other people, not hinders. If there's a year or more waiting list, you'll find that out. Don't ask, will it help, if you're not sure, you can try it and see. (I didn't do any of this, sorry. But I probably should have done.)

(And this is way, way outside the scope of the post, but if, if you ask someone you know fairly well, "it feels like this, do I probably have depression", then you probably do, and treating it is hard, but many many people find therapy, or one medication or another, or some combination helps, so try that, even if it's not a guarantee. Do not think, "nothing will help, there's no point", it's a trap. Do not think, "I should be able to fix this with willpower", not having willpower is exactly the disease, try to get that fixed first. If possible, get a friend to talk you through the steps of finding a professional, or the best alternatives if you can't do that. And do that *first*, fixing "I find doing things hard" will be a lot easier once you've started to handle that.)

As hinted above, if you have friends you can ask for advice, outsource some of these decisions. Often saying, "yes, duh, you'd benefit from therapy" or "it's worth it, keep going, you're nearly there" or "friend, you are not making progress, you are not going to do this by the deadline nohow."

Sometimes you need to get things done despite a bad life situation :( But if you can reduce the amount you're totally dispirited, it will likely help a lot. All sorts of things, from small tasks to massive ones, suddenly feel easy when I feel more upbeat.

I don't think it was always that straightforward, I think when I was mired in some of this stuff, having a better mood helped, but there was plenty of stuff that I still found impossible, and trying to do them just made me despair again. But the steady improvement meant I reached a point where, when my mood improved, things seemed straight-forward again.

Even small things. I get into a habit of throwing socks onto the bottom step, to take upstairs to the laundry basket next time I'm going. Do I, in fact, take them upstairs next time I'm going? I mean, walking up stairs with socks is not actually harder, the only thing I need to do is actually pick them up. But no, do I heck as like. Well, some days I do, some days I don't. I know I could build the habit of doing it always, I have for things I really need to do, but when I haven't, it's like a switch. When I feel better, I do random small chores because why not. When I feel bad, I feel doing that carries the weight of committing to ALWAYS do that and keeping it tidy forever and I shy away, leaving it until I actually have to do it. I think the specifics of those behaviours are very individual, but (a) if something feels impossible, know that most of the time, what you actually need to do *isn't* impossible, and doing something is probably better than doing nothing, and not thinking about the bigger problem except occasionally is often better than dwelling on it (b) if you practice, you often can learn to do little things without thinking about any of the hangups, don't put too much weight on it (c) if you can't today, maybe you will tomorrow, don't feel too bad if you can't.

Standard caveat

I'm not sure how much the depression description applies to me. I was never "not able to enjoy things" the way I associate with descriptions of depression, and if I got away from the problems I was worried about, I perked up immediately. But I did have a lot of "everything feels impossible". And I always had friends, enjoyable activities, etc, I never felt like I was sad or suffering especially, rather than I had a normal fairly enjoyable life, except that before I worked to improve it, for quite a while I kept not getting around to things, both fun things like "write a computer game" and important things like "paying bills" and "doing my job" underneath the waterline.

This is "how not to procrastinate" not "how to fix mental health". OK, further posts to follow.
jack: (Default)
For a year and a half I've been trying giving myself specific goals each month. Originally the idea was to take on a specific project I was excited about, but it slowly got diluted as my todo list filled up with overdue chores.

I know some people were surprised I was deliberately taking things on in that well, "but just do what I feel like" has never worked for me: I always used to panic that I'm not doing something else more urgent, or panic that I wasn't taking advantage of a rare opportunity to make significant progress on something I actually enjoyed, and usually ended up freezing up and not doing anything. And not just, not achieving significant projects -- often even not even achieving "reading a book I want to read instead of reading twitter".

The main benefit was getting stuff OFF my mental and actual todo list so I could do *some* things.

I had a few really satisfying months.

But now I'm reviewing the situation and decided to try something else.

I'm going to try to do some creative writing (a short story, a short chapter of a novel, or maybe a different creative project like board game design) in weeks 1 and 3 of the month. And weeks 2 and 4 will be "long-term chores", "day-to-day chores", "relax" or "some other project" depending how I feel.

I think I needed to go through the previous system to reach the point where this might work for me, but I think it makes more sense. I realise what helps me is some confidence that I'm *making progress* specifically. So having ANY time devoted to an ongoing project helps a lot -- in some ways even a tiny amount of time is good because it reassures me I'll achieve something *eventually*.

And hopefully that lets me relax in the other weeks, and do whatever seems appropriate without too much planning.

I was also ruthless at taking long-overdue chores, taking them off my month list, and putting them into a separate "kind of time sensitive but without a specific deadline" section.

Of course, I find myself revising my system every couple of years. In some way, I think a new system just helps by itself because the old system gets stale. But I also think, it is useful in finding what's most useful to me *now*.

I feel like I went a very very long way round to reach the point of being able to achieve steady reliable progress on, well, anything. Maybe because anything less than that didn't work for me at all -- inconsistent progress was basically the same as no progress, since I'd repeatedly lose faith in myself and preemptively give up. But that does mean that I sometimes reach unexpected plateaus of competence I hadn't expected to reach :)
jack: (Default)
Now I have a todo list, I don't really organise my email much any more. I star anything I need to deal with at some point, and I put into my todo list anything I need to do in a specific timeframe. And I've gone back to just accumulating stuff in the inbox :)

And I clear it out occasionally when I get round to it. But I feel like that works pretty well, not like I went backwards :)

(Not everything, gmail does magically separate regular emails, social media stuff, marketing stuff, password resets, etc)
jack: (Default)
It's not escaped me that my previous post sounds a bit like "coming out of depression". For a long time I've wondered if I have a... specific brain Thing. But I've been really shy about thinking about it openly, partly because of being scared to realise it if I do, partly because I know many friends who experience severe problems[1], and I don't want to trivialise them by speculating that I might have a mild form of... something when the evidence is pretty ambivalent.

Ironically, feeling better has made writing that post trivial instead of a giant chore I didn't think I could ever force myself to do :)

I know brain Things often come in groups, so it wouldn't be surprising if there were several related things. Conversely, some things are very binary, you do or you don't, but other things are "everyone does this, but if you do it so much it's a problem for your life, then that's probably A Thing that needs to be fixed".

What could there be? Ill-informed speculation follows.

Depression? I definitely have some signs. Difficulty forcing myself to do things. General feelings of worthlessness, and lack of being excited about things.

ADHD? I drink... lots of caffeine, and it seems to help me sleep more than keep me awake. Until recently, successful projects were always ones I threw myself at 200%, any other time, if I was doing anything worthwhile, I'd usually switch to browsing the internet really quickly.

But OTOH didn't feel like I was *distracted* by the internet, more that, forcing myself to do anything which was achieving something, as soon as I started, I felt a massive pressure away from doing it. Even with things that were important to do, that was one simple step, I felt a massive pressure to... not do them.

My clearest description is something like "uber procrastination". Doing *anything*, even things I actively want to do, has usually involved finding it really hard to get started. Even every day things -- if I had all weekend to do something, it would TAKE all weekend to get started. Even if it was something I wanted to do. But some important things took for years, because I'd shy away, or start shaking, when I forced myself.

Like, it feels ridiculous to describe procrastination as a life problem. But it clearly WAS. It did any number of harms.

I eventually improved that a LOT, partly through breaking through some of the biggest barriers through trial and error and forcing myself to do those things (much much thanks to the people close to me who helped a lot and were patient when I couldn't understand or explain why things were difficult). And partly through slowly cultivating an awareness that if something seemed intimidating, if I roughed out how well I could probably do it, even if that wasn't really good enough, doing that was a reasonable win, and that made starting big tasks a lot easier.

But I still felt a lot of small scale procrastination, of "don't want to stand up and go to work", "don't want to do the thing today", mostly procrastination for its own sake, not because the task would be unpleasant.

My working theory is something like, bad habits were screwed up in my brain for various reasons, probably due to some unfortunate tendency in my brain that became self-reinforcing, and got so big there were a giant problem, and caused symptoms that happened to be similar to Official Brain Things for related reasons.

What are the reasons to think that I don't have a specific Underlying Brain Thing? Well, I'm really not sure. But for depression, it always sounds like, things can make you happy, but usually can't make you not depressed unless they specifically treat it. But if I manage to get, like, a week of surmountable problems, a bit of social company, some relaxation time, then my brain seems to start working ok. It's just that I've built up the problems so much I almost never did experience that.

For ADHD, it doesn't seem like I can't concentrate -- I seem to have a normal ability to remember things, to keep concentrating across distractions, to work on something boring but worthwhile for long periods of time. It's just anything with a deadline that I can't concentrate on.

I'm sorry for this massive introspection dump. Especially, I hope it isn't bad for anyone who does have Actual Brain Things. But I'm also interested, if my description makes more sense to anyone else than it does to me.

ETA: Oh, right. Anxiety. Or anxiety?
jack: (Default)
Just over a week ago, things... somehow fell into place in my head. I think a confluence of circumstance led to that, that of all the things that felt weighing on me, they'd mostly resolved themselves one way or another.

Work felt like it shifted, not from any particular change, but like a magic eye picture from "probably all this work will be worthwhile, but there's no way to tell, I just need to force myself to have faith" to "ok, it seems what we're doing is achieving progress". But along with that change all sorts of other things just fell away too. All sorts of things that were, "oh my god, this has been hanging over me for years, it shouldn't be that hard, but even if i do it, I'll have so many other things to do too" became "oh well, most people probably don't have time for all those things, if I do even some of them I'll be kicking arse".

Getting things done shifted from predominantly "I need to force myself to do X, Y and Z today, inevitably I'll leave them as long as I can before starting so I have some rest" to "I could do A, B and C today, if I do I'll feel really good, and if I start them now, they shouldn't even take so long". I did more flop.

One possible instigation was work coming into focus from having clear deadlines with clear goals. Another was my resolve to set myself no long term goals for december, but try to relax. Another was my resolve to focus less on specific goals, and more on seeking self-reinforcing loops, of small mood improvements that let me do small tasks, which in turn lead to larger mood improvements.

I thought about this in terms of my putative productivity app. I realise that historically, the productivity tool I need is primarily about forcing myself to do a minimum. Of choosing what I can consistently do, and doing it EVERY SINGLE DAY, because then I can build up a habit of doing it, and a sense of achievement at sticking to it. But when my mood lifts, it's more like, I want to do all the things and I need to channel myself into doing a reasonable mix and pacing myself.

One question is, can I keep it up? I hope so, but I don't know for sure. Another is, am I actually being more effective, or happier, or neither? I think both are true but I'm not completely sure.
jack: (Default)
Quite a long time ago now, I read about the concept of inbox zero. For a long time I struggled with various productivity techniques. I sometimes temporarily achieved inbox zero, and I made big inroads against the habit of having all the urgent emails muddled in with everything else I'd ever received. Although that never quite became permanent.

However, now there maybe has been a permanent sort of shift. I think a combination of receiving less urgent emails, and of having a regular non-email based per-week todo list, and of generally being less stressed by all urgent things, have led to a point where I no longer *need* inbox zero. I generally only have a few emails needing attention, and those are starred. And other recent-ish email sits around in my inbox to a certain extent not doing much harm, but being handy if I need it.

And I'm sufficiently non-stressed that it's not usually something I need to *set aside time for*, but something I can do when I'm checking my email anyway. Any longer time commitments get put in a separate todo.

Non-email email (social network notifications, mailing lists, confirmations, etc, etc) gmail helpfully puts into a separate tab. Social network stuff I star anything I want to reply to, and empty it out every so often. Everything else I just glance at, and if it needs any response move to my main inbox and star it.

This has bad effects as well. Because it *usually* just works, if I get an urgent email and then suddenly go away, it can fall through the cracks. But that's hopefully ok, it's mostly how most people deal with tasks: they usually do it fine but occasionally miss something, instead of needing to be always perfect else they fail forever.
jack: (Default)
I've been at the new job over three months and it's going fairly well.

For a long time, I've felt like, each project goes through phases, of "just getting started and full of ideas" and "wrestling with someone else's code I don't understand" and "filling out features and making something fairly complete" and "dealing with an urgent problem". And they basically ALL caused me to procrastinate. But with very very many varied productivity tricks and techniques, I seem to finally be reaching a point where, in most of those phases, I can just go ahead and do work, without constantly struggling not to freeze up and get nothing done.

The last couple of weeks, I was a bit stuck in a "it doesn't work and I can hopefully fix it but I don't know for sure" loop, and hadn't realised how much it was dragging down my mood. It also seemed to be, I wasn't content if there was *any* major upcoming problem hanging over my life, I had to make progress on *all* of them before I felt at all better. But I eventually did.

Overall, that's really quite good. I still need to test if the improvement is ongoing, but it's an improvement I wasn't sure I'd ever quite reach. Unfortunately, because I'm me, my brain is less excited, as depressed that it took so long, and that afterwards things will not be significantly better.

There's been a slow shift. It used to be, if I had a little bit of time, I could never just, do something small (washing up, or code tidying, or replying to some emails). I could only ever do things when I made it so I *had* to. But as things improved, that resistance melted away, and "how intimidating tasks seemed" shrunk back to something related to how much work they actually were. Which I guess is where many people were all along.

Doing month-by-month goals or projects was definitely good, I think I want to keep that up. Sometimes they've been a specific project, like learning rust. Other times they've been just "catch up on these paperwork/chores". But having that structure helps a lot letting me see progress. And knowing a project is self-contained, I can see how much I can do, and then *stop* and force myself to re-evaluate my goal, not get stuck in a dragging-on project for ever.

I haven't done anything very spectacular this year, but I've learned about rust (and contributed!) and learned about writing an android app. And started a new job. And am confident that if I try to work on a project in a language I already know it would have gone a lot faster.

It feels like, given the slightest pressure to do things a particular way, even in my imagination, my brain immediately collapses into thinking "i have to do things that way" and it's really hard to *notice* how I'm stuck let alone dig myself out again. And that applies not only to specifics, "colleague refused to listen to idea, so can I ever consider that idea again in the future in any way?" but to meta-skills. It always feels like I *have* to fix everything by sheer force of will, not by, well, techniques that work, because that's what people expect of me. But it's not true, no-one does think that, but it *feels* like they do.

Unpausing

May. 1st, 2017 10:12 am
jack: (Default)
I don't want to count my chickens, but for the longest time, I've had the problem that when I have a day with no commitments, I feel like I have to take advantage of it and do all the things, and typically become overwhelmed by choice and expectation and end up doing not much.

Now, for almost the first time, I find that problem receding. I've no particular plans today, but I'm fairly confident, I'm going to spend a couple of hours hammering out miscellaneous todos, do some reading or watching tv, go for a walk outside, and maybe see Liv and Osos depending how busy we all are, and that's about all. Maybe I'll only do some of that, but that will still be good. But I don't fear I'll do *none* of that.

And that freedom makes it so much easier to do things -- to go for a walk or get into a project knowing that's time well spent, not time I intended to be doing something else.

I don't know if it will last, but despite a lot of angst about getting things done, I think having *some* month-by-month goals has been successful at making me feel *less* pressured.
jack: (Default)
I realise I've had *another* shift in habits.

Now I'm keeping a daily/weekly todo list more as standard, any emails I need to reply to on a specific timescale get duplicated into that system.

But that means I've shifted to starring emails that need a reply, and going through them occasionally, and the rest of my inbox has gone back to being "everything I've received recently0-ish that might be relevant". But mostly without the problem of "agh the important emails got lost".

Of course, gmail divides that into five folders: primary; social media notifications; corporate mailing list type stuff, and a couple of others. I could do something similar with filters. But it would be harder to cope if those were all muddled together. Non-starred mail in primary tends to be "conversations which are relevant in the next few days but don't need a reply right now". I tend to use social media notifications for marking comments I'd like to reply to, although that's fiddly. And the others rarely need any action (if they do, it's usually important and I move it into primary).
jack: Glowing recycle symbol (getting things done)
I recently realised something which many people had told me before, but I hadn't had the prerequisites in place to grok.

If I have a list of tasks to do today, and a rough breakdown of how long I expect them to take, and one is overrunning, it may make sense to take a break from *that* one and do all the others. And then start afresh on the longer one tomorrow. (At least, except when that one is SO urgent you just need to work on it alone until it's done.)

Partly because, even if your main work is overdue, there's always small other stuff (answering emails, dealing with admin, dealing with requests from other people) that it's good if it still gets done. And better that it gets SOME attention, even if that's just "I got your email but don't have time to reply in detail" rather than none.

And partly because, if something runs late, it often then runs MORE late, so (a) it will probably still be late even if you do drop everything else and (b) if you don't it will usually eat up ALL of the time.

And partly because, 10% of the tasks often take 90% of the time, and sometimes that's the most important task and sometimes it isn't, so if you advance on *all* tasks, you may find you've done all the most important ones and may never do the overrunning one at all.

I think that never really worked for me before, because tasks were ALWAYS overrunning, not because they took too long, but because I was scared of starting them. And the only way of starting them was forcing myself to, if I did other stuff, I would never start at all. (Which is ok if that task can be dropped, but not if it's the main thing I should be doing.) So my main task always overran, and the other stuff never got done till it got urgent. Now I've got better at not doing that :)

OTOH, the system also breaks down when you have too much stuff coming in to do all of it, and you don't have time for even the most basic of reaction to stuff people are thrusting onto your plate. At that point, you need to adopt a "don't have time for this" and "see if this goes away by itself before responding" attitude (or get an assistant).
jack: (Default)
Resolutions

Last year, I decided to try having month-by-month goals instead of trying to do new years resolutions.

Nov was NaNoWriMo which was what gave me the idea. That was a big commitment, which I think averaged out to about 2h per day, with some "thinking time" on top. Dec was to recover. Feb will be "start new job".

Jan was "learn some rust, if possible contribute to rust compiler". That was a bit speculative, I wasn't sure how big a goal was reasonable. But it turned out fairly well. I think I got a reasonable handle on the basic syntax, and the borrow checker concepts which most people find a hurdle to getting to know it. I build a couple of "hello world" programs to be sure I understood the building and packaging system.

And I built the compiler from source, and submitted a pull request to fix one of the "easy" documentation issues from the issue tracker, and learned how the project was organised. Which is now accepted!

So I think on balance that was about the right amount and specificity of goal. And I count it as mostly a success.

I reckoned the time spent stacked up something like 1 week of work, minus overhead faff, was about the equivalent of an intense weekend hackathon, or a not-very-intense project over a month. Nanowrimo was about twice that (more on some days likely). And some projects lend themselves to a brief burst of activity and others to a longer steady progress.

I'm simultaneously pleased that I *can* expect to focus energy on some projects and actually get somewhere with them. But also depressed that there's only so many months and each lets me achieve comparatively little.

I have lots of ideas of what I might do, but not sure what is most worthwhile to spend that effort on. Some coding projects. Some self-improvement projects. Some social things.

Daily todos

I shifted my daily todos a bit incorporating some ideas from bullet journals (as linked by ghoti).

I started keeping my daily todo-list IN my diary, and when I've done an item, changing the "-" bullet point to an "x" and moving it down to the bottom of the list. So what I'm GOING to do naturally becomes a diary.

I also started, instead of having subheadings, having a few different types. "=" bullet point for largish task. "-" for anything small but needs to be today. "s" for social-type task. (todo and social get postponed in different circumstances and consume energy in different ways.)

It feels easier to plan what I WANT to do, without feeling like I've failed if I don't do all of it.

I also started keeping my actual diary in multiple bullet points with a different bullet, instead of strung together. I'll see how that goes.

I feel like I'm slowly re-evolving a system lots of people already recommended to me. But I couldn't just *do* it, it depends on having confidence that putting things in a list actually works, and I've only slowly acquired that.

Likewise, maybe I don't need to record so much. But doing so was a step in the process of not worrying about it so much. And what's useful I keep, and what I don't need I've got better at just deleting, and not thinking "but I might need that one day".

Similarly, I keep a parallel diary I call my therapy diary for rants where I know they won't seem as persuasive in future but I have to make them. "WHY WHY WHY can't I just do X without screwing it up" "why does y keep going wrong". "this happened and now I feel really bad about it". The idea was, I'd think through the things later and come to terms with them. But actually just writing them down helped a lot. Now I've ranted in it much less often that I did to start with.

HabitRPG

Jan. 12th, 2016 10:39 am
jack: (Default)
I started HabitRPG from where I left off, junking all the nice but overcomplicated tasks and dailies which I think I'd over-done, and starting over with a list of six+ habits, no dailies, all geared to be things I feel good about doing, but often don't get round to.

Currently:

Todo item (anything on today's todo list, usually quite green or blue)
Admin (Updating todo lists, etc. May combine this with above)
Exercise (Any of my official "jog 2+ times a week", but also any extras)
Hobby (Any of my own projects, not just "anything for fun", but things I need to make time for if I want to do them, like ongoing classes, or programming projects, fiction or game design)
Ongoing Social (Anything that doesn't happen automatically every week, like making plans to see mum or non-cambridge friends)
Self-care/ablutions (Shower, shave, brush teeth, etc. Also remembering to eat when I'm hungry if applicable etc)
Housework (Anything it's useful to do a little bit of every day)
Long-term (Any long-term TODOs)
Medium-term (Anything on my TODO list that doesn't absolutely have to be done today... I'm especially trying to change from doing none of these until they're urgent, to doing some of these...)

What I have always found difficult is that some of these are naturally green, but others are naturally yellow or red, because even an ideal rate of doing them will be slow by comparison. I can't remember if that's adjustable with task difficulty or something? But I'm slowly getting used to the idea that it works ok like that. If I do my day-to-day tasks until they're mostly green, I can leave them and that's usually ok, and work on the longer-term ones. After all, I want to do all of them "sometimes", if I do two long-term tasks in a row, that's probably better, I don't need to be prioritising medium tasks over them especially.
jack: Glowing recycle symbol (getting things done)
For I think the first time since starting habitRPG I failed to shave and get to work by 9:30 just because. I did do most of the other parts of my morning routine.

I'm proud of keeping it up so far, and hope that I can get over the hurdle of keeping it going even when one failure. That's often the riskiest time, when you start thinking "well, I can't do it perfectly, so what level of imperfection is ok?"

I think this what some of habitRPG's class features are for, to allow you to fail occasionally but maintain a "perfect" record, except I haven't started trusting them because previously I didn't need to and didn't know if they were well-balanced or not.

I think my problem is that for the first few weeks, checking things off was exciting and made me feel good. Then I started to get complacent and doing the minimum didn't feel like an achievement any more -- so I lost motivation and didn't do it, which is exactly what I was trying not to do. I think maybe I need to start watching the streak counters, how many days on the trot I've done it. If I can say "every day for N months", it gives me just a small amount of investment in keeping it going even when it's become normal.
jack: (Default)
Sorry, the previous post may have been too bleak. I think in general I actually establishing a much better baseline where "happy" and "organised" and "productive" are the norm, and "I know I'm good, I don't understand why things keep going wrong" isn't.

That's a point I kept hoping I'd get to, and only now am I cautiously wondering if maybe I actually have!

But that progress involves a lot of examining problems and cleaning them out not letting them fester, but that brings them to light in a way they didn't when they just mouldered quietly.

Things which have been a lot better:

* Eating breakfast every day, eating soup and toast for lunch every day instead of sandwich which leaves me feeling a lot bouncier
* Kept a multipack of crisps in my desk drawer for when I DO want to eat them with a sandwich, and didn't snack on them at any other times
* Getting in to work not-at-the-last-minute, semi-regularly
* Much more ready to talk to people and less scared
* Still SOMETIMES scared, but much more able to recognise "oh, I'm in a bad mood it will pass" rather than "agh, I'm so useless, must dwell on how useless I am"
* Not feeling I must reply to every LJ comment and read every link before doing something else
* Reasonable expectation of turning up to work and getting things done, not freezing :)

Things I still want to improve on:

* Not trying to do too much in the evening, and getting to sleep in good time
* Make regular time for other hobbies, specifically home programming projects
* Make measurably steady progress on little tasks without letting them mount up
jack: (Default)
I've been very cautious with setting up daily resolutions on habit rpg because the punishment is a really crappy way to learn. Several friends have used NO dailies and I think that's wise. Or rather, I like developing streaks, I'm not sure about taking damage -- that makes sense, but is very dispiriting, rewards are generally better!

But I did use them for things I know I CAN do every day, but have had difficulty actually motivating me to do, such as a regular morning routine when I don't skip half of it most of the time. After a week and a half, that's gone very well -- I have fulfilled them basically every day with no angst. Go me!

But one has been very difficult, "take a lunch hour less than an hour". I knew I sometimes ran over, trying to fit in too many things, trying to reply to some emails, etc, trying to do shopping, go for a walk, play some Ingress, write a blog post, etc... when really "eat lunch, say hi to people, stretch legs and rest eyes for 20 minutes" is about all I usually have time for. But I hadn't realised that had been almost EVERY day. It's not been a big problem as long as I work the rest of the time, but I think I need to stop pretending that trying to fit things in isn't distracting, and find things I can do to relax that don't involve "and I'll just do one more thing"...
jack: (Default)
I've tried so many different productivity techniques, and eventually I noticed I had different but related problems susceptible to different solutions. Particularly annoying is something I didn't notice was a pattern because it used to happen very rarely, when I'd have a vista of uninterrupted time ahead of me, no overdue or crisis tasks to firefight, an opportunity to get ahead -- I'd freeze up. As much or more as when I was panicked.

It's really annoying because it would take a lot of effort to get to that state, and then I'd reliably squander it. In fact, it only now occurs to me that maybe many people did "good enough" by never getting to that state -- by being good at living in crisis-mode, they could actually be really good at their life and career by handling things when they were not quite too late, and never waste time on things on-one was screaming about (which is often good) at the cost of never doing really important things that aren't urgent right now. But it never occurred to me to do that, I assumed I had to have a system of "get organised, then do things, then enjoy life"... :)

But now I'm getting better at it. Several techniques help: just as with when I'm distracted and demotivated, turning off the internet and setting goals in half-hour chunks gets me to make progress without panicking about "what about the rest of the week". Having flexible goals with lots of stretch goals stops me giving up at the first delay. Having goals per-day gives me an incentive to crack on and get things over with, not just feel like I have to slave away for lots of hours.

This week, I'm a little busy, but everything seems under control, things look optimistic, my manager is on holiday for a week, I have small talking-to-people challenges that I should be able to handle, and a couple of interesting projects to do if I have time... prime candidates for procrastination. Can I work well anyway? Wish me luck!

OK, hopefully signing off internet for a couple of hours, see you shortly :)
jack: Glowing recycle symbol (getting things done)
More than a year ago, I started using beeminder.com to track my resolution to go to the gym two-three times a week. I only used it to track, not any of the pledge-money options, but I already found that really useful, and I've stuck to it ever since.

But it's partly successful because it's a resolution I know I'm physically capable of, and it's important to me to keep, and doesn't take that much time -- I can plan a week and say "other than work, I can work everything else round this without doing significantly less". I don't have to say "is this excuse sufficient" -- I've a pretty clear idea of what's genuinely exceptional, and everything else, it's not that I literally don't have time, it's just that I'm looking for an excuse.

But then, chuffed with success, I added a lot more resolutions (and there's more I'd like to add) I want to get into the habit of always keeping up even when I'm busy. Going to work on time. Hours spent at work concentrating not trying to stop procrastinating. Phone mum at least once a week. Phone/email Liv at least twice a week. Shave every morning. Eat fruit. Blog thrice a week. And all of those are good, and I've improved massively on them, but I've reached a point where I can't reliably do ALL of them ALL of the time, and every time I "bend" a goal a little, I feel the habit of keeping resolutions get weaker and the whole system get less reliable and the bad habits start to come back.

Partly, I need to plan in advance, and say, "I can't do all this at the last minute because there may not be time, I need to know in advance when I need to spend a couple of hours catching up on stuff".

Partly I need to be realistic about priorities: some resolutions the ONLY reason not to do them is procrastination, and I should be able to just always do them; but some resolutions, actually take time and sometimes they're less important than socialising or hobbies or spending time with Liv.

Partly I need to concentrate on building habits. If I can ALWAYS get up at the same time, shower, shave, dress, and leave, I never think "oh, lots of time, I'll just check email first" and end up being late.

Partly I need to calibrate my expectations. Doing what I'm doing now is lots better than I was a year ago. But now it feels like it should be "normal" so if I shave, go to work on time and go the the gym, I don't feel "yay, successful day", I think "that's exhausting, now I actually need to get something done". But I need to be realistic that many days, doing all the things I've precommitted to and nothing more, is as successful as much as I have time and energy for, and I should either be pleased with that (and schedule long-term progress for other days), or accept that if I want to get something else done, I need to compromise on one of the things I previous said I'd try to do.

Partly I need to be realistic about what's achievable, so if I can't keep everything, I don't fall into the habit of fudging and assuming I'll be able to make it up later.

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