May and June didn’t go as planned. I did maybe half the content I set as my minimum, and I fretted about it. Not only did I not get things done, but I also wasted time berating myself and got even less done. This behaviour is nothing new. I’ve always let things spin around in my head, and it has gotten in the way before.
One of the aspects I try to evaluate is how productive I am. Am I getting the work done? Could I get it done faster, without losing quality? I am writing this on my phone because I put the MSWord app on my phone so I could write anywhere at any time. I recently formatted the website so that I could save time when I published things.
Spending time sulking that I’m not getting more done is another item that I could do away with if I could just work out how. Behaviour change is difficult, especially something that doesn’t happen on a cycle. But the first step to behaviour change is identifying that it needs to change, then identifying triggers or tells to move a sub or semi-conscious habit into the open. Then you have a choice to stop.
Or at least that is the method that has worked for me in the past.
I designed my content schedule to be flexible enough to handle the typical disruptions of life and honed it even further over time. If I have a long day at work, or something unexpected comes up, I have enough flexibility to get stuff made on time. Academically I can handle the uneven pathway of life, but in practice, I have failed a lot. Not only do I get behind, but I lose even more ground because I start to fixate on how much work I have to do, then end up playing computer games instead of making progress.
On the procrastination front, I’ve been making some progress. Since I brought in the goal of getting two hours writing done each weekday I haven’t been procrastinating as much. An hour doesn’t seem that long, and I seem to have tricked my brain into working so long as I’ll be done in a minute. Saturdays I’ve been trying to have as a recharge day, but I want to start getting long term projects written on Sundays. If I still have last week’s content to do, then I catch up then. What happens is I look at the clock and go “I’ll do it later.” Then it’s Monday.
I’m going to keep searching for productivity to make more time, but defeating the Resistance that comes when I have a big task isn’t something that can be fixed that way. Productivity hacks set me up with better equipment, but the best shoes can’t climb the mountain for you, the only thing that does that is one foot after another.