Time management: How stopping setting goals improved my productivity and happiness.

[Abrodos]

Ok guys, I just saw a thread about feeling bad when not being productive.
I've always struggled with productivity myself, so I thought I'd share the method I've been using for some years.

For a long time, time management has been one of my biggest struggles.
My job (comission sculptures) has always allowed me a high degree of flexibility in my daily schedule. I knew I wasn't disciplined enough to get up early, and that I didn't want to give up sleeping in a bit every morning (I'm very into lucid dreaming, dream diaries, etc).

But I had no way to really know if I was really slacking, or if I was working the same hours as others or even more.

I was at home all day (I work from home) and my parents had the sensation I was doing nothing, or worse, I thought I was actually doing stuff when I didn't (call it unconscious action faking).
And the most important thing, all the times I tried to set goals I failed. I tried to plan the next week, even the next day, and I never was able to accomplish those goals. Huge negative marks appeared in all my goal evaluations, and that had a negative impact in my self esteem.

So I thought, what if I focus all the "goal setting" energy into moment awareness/tracking?
So I started noting down the work hours in a small grid as I did them, and adding them up at the end of the week.

As time passed I made it more complex. I separated the "work" in each individual project, and then in individual stages of the crafting process.

That allowed me to better establish an hourly wage (the same for all my clients), know exactly how much time I spent on every part of the process, and ultimately price my comissions confidently.

I then started writing down everything I did on my free time, so I ended up tracking all my day, everyday, from wake up to going to bed. That's been an absolute gamechanger.

The system:

• I use a yearly planner. It has a 2-page-per-week layout, each day separated in half-hour spacings. I found out the one that works best for me is the Passion Planner by Angelia Trinidad.
  
• I don't plan my week, but keep track of it. That's the most important focus change I did. I just have always the paper nearby and keep writing down everything I do. When trying to plan a week, I'd be overly optimistic in my goal setting. I then didn't reach it, small unplanned tasks kept appearing, things went wrong, so that gave me a constant sense of frustration. Now, what I feel is freedom. Of course I have some routines and general goals, but I am always able to work on what I feel like at any moment, start a bit later, or take small breaks during work-time without feeling unproductive/bad, because I'm tracking that as rest time.
  
  I try to always do stuff in portions not smaller than 15 minutes so the managing/adding hours up is easier. If I get distracted while working, I write "slack/FB" on that small period of time, and I get back to work until I slack again (having the hour mark for each site on the browser history has been helpful here, as I'm able to know when exactly I opened a certain page).

Assessment
I evaluate the week two times:
On friday afternoon, I do a quick add-up of all the hours I've worked.
Does it add up to 40h? If so, I'm free to do whatever I want on the weekend, or work extra to reach the 50h mark and feel super productive. Is it less than that? I have to work a bit to reach the 40h.
I also do a general evaluation on Sunday evening or Monday morning. I then add up all the time spent on each category, and I compare it with the previous week, to see what I did wrong, what I did right, and what my general directions should be the following week.

Routine
I normally work 6h every day including weekends, One of the struggles I find is keeping in touch with acquaintances, as most people are available on weekends.
I do 40h weeks for two reasons:
- It's the amount considered traditionally fair by labour acts;
- It's a way of telling my family, myself and the world that I'm not a slacker for starting working at 11h, that I in fact work more hours than them. (I know it's a bit pathetic but it's the truth, Fine Arts degree has always been associated with laziness/a bohemian lifestyle).

Categories
My categories when assessing my time are:

Paid work (i divide it in every comission I'm doing)

Unpaid work (cleaning house/workspace, non-paying projects, building my business, personal artistic work, studying/learning stuff, doing my taxes, etc)

Self care/good free time (sport, spending time with friends/family, playing with my pet, playing some pc games/watching films once in a while, resting when tired from an intense day of work, going to therapy,)

Bad free time (time spent on facebook or instagram, also browsing tinder or similar apps, watching porn, or being anxious/depressed or in pain (been having headaches for some time).

I include masturbation in the bad category because it's something I have to cut down, but I must say that I don't feel masturbation is inherently a bad habit, but a form of self-care.
There are many ways to face it; it's not the same to order a pizza and eat it quickly in front of the TV, than to spend all the morning cooking yourself some fancy meal.
Related to this, I'd reccommend a book called "the multi-orgasmic man".

Nevertheless, with the idea of channeling my sexual desire and fantasies into something productive, I've started to shift some fapping time into writing erotic stories, which, when shared, will be a way of opening up some parts of myself while creating value for others (some I posted got quite popular some time ago).


Finally, after joining the forum, I've added a couple concepts:
- Setting goals not for things done (I'm still unrealistic about that), but for less hours spent on bad habits and more on good ones;
- I'm now experimenting with limiting the tracking to Mon-Sat and completely doing what I want on Sundays.

Keeping track of everything you do right in the moment looks a bit obsessive, but once you get used to it it becomes almost natural. It's just a matter of having the paper nearby at all times and looking frequently at the clock. When you start doing something you place a mark, and when you stop, another small mark and you name the time fraction. If working away, I leave the paper at home and just note down when I leave to work and when I get back home. So I count all the commuting time as unpaid work hours, or I charge them to my clients if they're related to some comission.

Well I hope all this info is useful!

Feel free to comment with any doubts or suggestions.

Thanks

 

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