Today I felt like writing a bit about my average day. Which is kind of strange but you'll see what I mean. For a long time, my motto has practically been "I'll work on that later". It's funny how later never really happens and how quick time flies by when you do nothing. So now I want to do something. After a lot of experimenting, I have a system that works for me. I'll write more on it as time goes on (it's one of several writing projects along with this blog) but here's a quick overview.
At some point, I decided to make a list of everything I want to do in a day. Simple, right? Wrap it up - post over. That's all folks. If only it was that easy for me. I've found I can be really good at making really detailed lists. I can easily spend an hour breaking down things into smaller and smaller pieces but when I'm finally done with the list, I haven't made any progress. Then I have so many things on the list that it feels overwhelming again and I don't get anywhere. How do I fix that? I make worse lists!
They aren't actually worse, they're less detailed and more achievable now. It seemed backwards at first but when I'm coming up with my daily do list, instead of breaking writing into "Write a story about xyz" the task is instead "10 minutes of writing". This keeps my lists succinct and achievable. That achievable piece is important too. If I can't finish it today, it doesn't belong on the list. No more items of "make AI project to take over the world"; "10 minutes of coding practice" will work nicely and still get me closer to my goal.
I'm arguing semantics here but the shift in mentality helps me get moving more. The other thing is how small these really are. At one point, my smallest item was "3 minutes of meditation". That's a tiny amount. Almost not useful. The important thing is these are the minimums I want to get done today. Right now I'm up to 30 minutes of writing and I'll code for a few hours. That's great too but I hit my minimums. Consistency keeps me moving and helps more than big sprints. Those 3 minutes of meditation became easier for me so now I do 10 minutes. Over the next few months, I may add another 5 minutes a few times or if coding gets hard, I'll back it off to 5 minutes.
Some of my tasks aren't daily either - exercise is Monday, Wednesday, Friday; caffeine use has a 48 hour cooldown; fancy dinner is a weekend only task. The idea is that I'm doing what I want, making it easy to keep track, and not putting things off for a hypothetical later. I think that's a great start from where I was and it's been easier for me to maintain progress with. All of that said, here's my current list and some notes. Keep in mind, these are the minimums I want to do every day and regularly go over on. They're also not in any kind of order so it's what I feel like tackling next.
I'll put the exercise one in a post on health sometime but that's the gist of what my day looks like outside of work. Thanks to this, I've been feeling good about what I get done. Clearing out the list is really rewarding each day!