Keeping Time

This is part of a series:

  1. The Path
  2. Keeping Time
  3. Action Precedes Motivation
  4. Virtues

Life is a journey through time, and threading the needle from who you are to who you’d like to be is no easy task. It’s incredibly easy to create bad habits and poor behavioral scripts which offend our better intentions, and then allow them to insidiously take custody of our time. These can be combatted with a few simple techniques which emerged for me as I worked through the Adult ADHD Toolkit, a wonderful book that offered a ton of great advice regarding time management and staying motivated.

Tools

To make any personal time management system effective, it’s imperative to select a consistent way to track tasks, goals, plans, and a schedule. This should be some format that allows you to document:

  1. Task lists, preferably daily because this is the best way to build consistency
  2. A schedule of repeating events
  3. Short notes of planning and reflection

A daily planner is also great for this if you prefer to use pen and paper. I tried this for a while, but ultimately I found the amount of writing to be cumbersome. It didn’t work well for me because it was very easy to slack off, and when it stops being used with regular frequency it stops being valuable.

This bottleneck pushed me towards trying digital tools. I compulsively check my phone anyway so I figured if I reoriented it to push more productivity tools rather than ceaseless distracting apps, then I could keep myself on track while also reducing my time frittered away on meaningless digital activity.

I get the most mileage out of using Apple’s stock productivity ecosystem. Reminders, Calendar, Notes, and Shortcuts offer massive functionality for free, so I see no point in using whatever the tool du jour is because I always fall off from using it. I’ve tried Evernote, Notion, SimpleNotes, and while quite powerful there was too much friction to be able to consistently use them.

Sessions

Sessions are a scheduled time block for stepwise work to achieve an objective. I have a few sessions on the books at all times, some examples are for working on music, studying a subject, working on blog posts. These are best at a consistent interval, and I typically do mine weekly at the same time of day.

The guiding principle is for this technique is to create a consistent practice that has a low barrier of entry. Many times I will set a time for something and prevail on my intentions for a week or two, but then the feeling of low motivation rears its head and knocks me off track. Thus begins the procrastination cycle, when one week becomes two and so forth, until the very thought of getting started again causes me to recoil with anxiety. A cognitive tip here is to lower the bar when something is stressing you out and triggering avoidance. It’s helpful to get your mind off of the daunting incompleteness of a project, and instead focus on spending time invested on working it out.

Establishing a duration here is incredibly important, as the absolute minimum for a session is to set a timer and be with the tools required until the timer rings. I approach my time chunks in increments of 30, 60, and 90 minutes. I tried to use the Pomodoro technique for some time, but I found myself getting in the coveted flow state just as the timer would ring. I normally shoot for 90 minutes, but the other options are helpful when the schedule is tight or the energy for a full hour and a half is just not there.

Routines

For behavioral habits I’d like to build and break, or general repetitive tasks, I keep a list of things to do or avoid that I mark as completed at the end of the time frame. The time frames I think are valuable are daily, weekly, and monthly. Start with a small amount of daily tasks, maybe three or four small tasks that can be completed in a few minutes. The goal here is to build consistency. I give myself a rating based on the percent done every day and use that as a metric to judge how I’m doing. If habits are completed at a rate of 75% day after day, I’m happy with that. This is based on the “Don’t break the chain” strategy championed by comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

This is one of the times digital tools can be very powerful. I use Reminders’ list templates to make the process of creating lists with the same elements very easy. Completed reminders are logged by Shortcuts daily, and the rating is automatically calculated and saved for reference.

Retrospectives and Planning

At a regular interval, some time should be spent reflecting on progress towards goals and planning which goals are actively being worked. I like to match the life cycles I use for routines, daily, weekly, and monthly. Daily I like to take a minute to write down a few things of which I’m grateful, and what my intention is for tomorrow. Weekly I take a minute to review how the last week went, and what tasks I need to do in the coming week to make progress on my current goals.

Monthly is a bit more intensive, but doesn’t take more than thirty minutes. I set a few goals for the coming month. These should be objectives that make progress on completing a project and are achievable within the time frame. I do this after I review how my previous month went, and how I’m doing in my projects overall. A good example of an overall project would be release a new record as Mottled Moth. A monthly goal could be something like record all guitar parts, mix the tracks in post production, etc.