An open vista of uninterrupted time...
Feb. 16th, 2015 09:25 amI'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 :)
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 :)