Throughout November, inspired by Sebastian Marshall,
I decided take on the challenge of having the 30 most productive days of my
life.
As Marshall writes:
This is a bit scary. I had the idea last Saturday, and was terrified on
Sunday.
It’s scary as it feels like it’s whatever you come down to. When you give
everything you have, you find yourself in a paradoxical state of weakness. What
if the result of your absolute max is disappointing? After my home-spun
philosophical observations – I decided to give the challenge a fair go. For
the challenge, I jotted down the things I wanted to achieve:
Start practising regularly on the piano. Inspired by a concert with Olafur Arnalds
and Nils Frahm
in Berlin, a good friend lent me his piano and volunteered to get me started
over some beer. I felt it was about time I started something completely
outside my comfort zone. Music
was a great candidate.
Get back into running. Since the summer of 2011 I have enjoyed barefoot
running on and off. In August and September I had excused myself with the
preparations for and the actual Informatics Olympiad
and got out of my running rhythm.
Waste fewer hours a day. Too many hours are wasted on social media, Skype and
improper planning. Low hanging fruit.
Start practising for the 2013 Informatics Olympiads. This was a biggie. I wish
to get a medal at the 2013’s International Olympiad, and commencing regular
training a year before is an absolute must to obtain that.
750 words. I had already started this in October, but
as this was new to me, I felt it should be added to the list. I wanted to wake
up 15 minutes earlier, and write about whatever first occurred to me. Whether
it was a noun, adjective or verb, I would just go with it and explore every
road, memory and reflection from there. On some days it got philosophical, other
days spiritual, reflective and often political. It proved easy to find
something to write about once I had broken the barrier each day of the first
week.
Figuring out a planning scheme. How do I get the most done? Planning the day down to
the minute? Preparing the next day?
Reading every night before going to bed. Seeing as I got rid of my iPhone
which I always used before closing my eyes, I needed to replace that with
something meaningful that wasn’t just bringing the laptop to bed.
These were the added things out of the ordinary things that include work,
assignments, homework, classes, duties and errands.
November
The productivity month did not feel as much out of the ordinary as I had feared.
I quickly found out that I am already very productive and it proved difficult to
cramp in more things. It has always been a dogma to myself that I could always do
more, if I just planned better and wasted less time. But I believe I did hit a
well-sought limit with the piano-training. I decided to peel that off in the
first week. Every week, I experimented with a new planning method: planning the
entire week at once, planning only the next day, a combination of the first two.
I tried all these three both at a rough level and at a down-to-the hour
specification level. This proved very rewarding. Other than that, I reached all
my goals: I used my time more efficiently, I solved a lot of Olympiad tasks,
wrote a rant every morning and ran 5K or more every other day.
Reflections
I learned quite a few things about myself and my approach to my
daily life throughout this month.
Three is the focus limit. I reconfirmed for myself that focusing on more than
three things at once is almost impossible for me. For now, these three things
are: school, work and the Olympiad. I am in a point of my life where my mind
is active from 7 AM to 11 PM every single day. Piano currently does not fit.
Although three is not many, I would always prefer just one thing. The less you
do, the better whatever you do will be. Currently, it is impossible for me to
get down to one. But I found to scatter the focus among three major things
works out to acceptable results.
More than one habit change at a time is hard, but definitely possible.
I’m a firm believer of changing only little at a time, which generally leads
to greater consistency. Changing or adding more than one habit, makes it
exponentially more difficult. The new habits in this month were running and
writing regularly (and piano).
I am near my personal limit already. Pushing in more things is dangerous at this
point. I took on a larger school duty which intensified in December and the
start of January. This was a mistake and made me neglect “the big three”. My
old dogma of “just planning better” has been put to a final sleep.
Find the planning system that works best for you. I tried a lot of different methods,
and I found that what works best for me is to make a rough plan on Sundays of
what the week is going to be like on paper, listening to some silent music.
Then keep on track throughout the week every night before going to bed, by
making a rough plan for the next day and evaluating that day. That way I am
always on top of my week; assignments, work, errands and training. This also
prevents these things from popping up when I am laying in my bed. A month like
this is a great way to figure out what works best for you.
It proved very motivational. I have never been able to do so much, in so
little time. Setting a short-level goal like this, involving your larger goals
is an amazing way to make progress on all fronts.
Reading is just so much better for falling asleep quickly. As a
replacement for social media and screen light from a smartphone’s tiny screen.
Writing every day is rewarding. Keeping a journal is amazing, and 750 words
every morning is a great way to do that. The gamification part of the website
works better than I would admit. Many morning I would prepare for meetings or
classes if I had something special going on. Just try to write out a
hypothetical conversation where I play the other part as well. By enforcing it
on myself every morning, I often was more well-prepared for the day. I stopped
my spree at 50 days because my December month suddenly got out of hand. I plan
to get into it again soon. But one change at a time. I’m in no rush.
Conclusions
I recommend everyone taking up a month like this. It’s scary, but very
rewarding. You will raise your understanding of your own task-handling
capabilities and limits, as well as hopefully discover your own best planning
method.