A New Way of Organizing My Time

I go long stretches of time without a ton of structure in my personal life. Sure, I have things that I like to do, and even things that I need to do. And I’ll even go so far as to make to-do lists with dates attached. These kinds of lists can prove helpful, and even fruitful at times. But, ultimately, the majority of these chores and projects just keep getting pushed weeks, or even months, and my productivity suffers.

I’ve been only periodically acknowledging this. Weeks will go by, and I’ll keep seeing the same items on the list. In the past, I’ve been successful in combatting this by breaking my days down to 30-minute intervals and blocking out time for certain projects. I’ve not done this in years, but last week it felt like it was time for me to jump back into a highly detailed schedule.

That said, today was the first day of this new schedule and it went very well. Not only was I a lot more productive, but I literally crossed more to-dos off my list in one day that I have in two weeks. It feels great.

The list has a lot of small household projects on it for now, but soon I’ll have gotten through all of those and will be moving on to fun projects, like coding, circuit design, etc. Part of this will be more frequent blogging here too which should be a nice way for me to chronical what’s going on. And for those who care to know, you’ll be along for the ride.

As I write this, I’m about to enter the Read Magazines block of time, which is prodding me to conquer the stack of unread magazines on my desk that I never seem to find time for.

First up: The MagPi Issue 103 (March 2021).

One thought on “A New Way of Organizing My Time

  1. As I was telling you, Cal Newport is waaaaaaay into Time Block Planning. https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/10/14/my-new-planner-the-time-block-academy/

    Something about having every minute of my time planned is unpleasant to me, so I don’t do it. I only plan on the daily and weekly level. If I start locking down my strict minutes and hours I just don’t enjoy my day at all. I end up feeling like a robot (even though I already am). Maybe too many bad experiences from working in retail or on a time clock. BUT it seems like Time Block Planning really works for some people.

    -Carl.

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