I hope this will be of some use and value to anyone who wants to better manage their time, particularly for anyone who wants to maximize their productivity while reserving enough time to do other things with their lives, like have friends and hobbies, without unfairly prioritizing one over the others.
Here's an example of what my time tracking template looks like:
Today was a bad day. Normally I spend much less time fucking around, but today I was in kind of a weird mood and didn't need to urgently get anything done. My goal is to get that number in the middle, the 'Fucking-around-to-getting-shit-done' ratio, as low as possible. Today it was 2.1 --- two hours and twenty minutes of fucking around for every one hour spent productively. Yesterday wasn't so bad; that number was more like 1.8. The day before was good until I got derailed: that number was 1.1. Tomorrow, I'll see if I can't at least achieve at least parity.
Dude I love you so much!!!
ReplyDeleteIn looking at this may I suggest one other category beside fucking around and getting shit done....Just being, like stopping on purpose. Some might call it sharpening your axe. It seems that anyone who is taking the time to track their life like this is concerned with efficiency and general well being. I comend to you activities like prayer, meditation, or just stopping to breathe. Many Christians and Jewish folks have an awesome discipline of sabbath. Stopping has a lot to do with "getting shit done"
There is another blog that I really love called 'experimental theology' and I really recommend just about everything the dude writes but I wonted to especially recommend yesterdays post called "Good Enough" and I think you might like it. http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2013/02/good-enough.html
Again, I really do love you man!
Wow, thanks for the link; I think this guy's right on in a lot of ways!
ReplyDeleteI fell off the time-tracking wagon for a little bit when an event in my personal life shattered all my best-laid plans, but am back on, and realized that I tend to derail like this because I try to make it too complicated. I really only want to know how much time I spend working versus not working. Because I wind up sacrificing a lot of things in my pursuit of excellence, and struggle with the notion that one day, I'll have it all together and be at the top of whatever game I'm playing. It isn't so much a fear of death, as a fear of being forgotten. When it's laid out like that, it sounds insane, doesn't it?
Think about who we remember after they're gone: Presidents, celebrities, best-selling writers, people who happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right resources at their disposal to take advantage of their opportunities. Not everyone gets to be famous, and being remembered long after you're dead is not all it's cracked up to be. Meanwhile, the combined effort and intent of the people who are not remembered makes all the difference. Leaders are just riding a current. I'd rather row.