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Taking control of your calendar


 

Do you know what I did last week?

This will sound crazy and you might think I need help (honestly maybe I do!). I have been struggling to manage my time and responsibilities lately. Not so much in terms of knowing what I need to do, more balancing what I need to do with what I want to do.


What had been happening was that too many things were pushing off, "Oh, I'll get to that tomorrow" or I was allowing myself to think that "I don't have time for that".

The consequence was that every few days, things would stack up and the biggest place that was suffering was my sleep. Now, I appreciate off the bat that might sound lazy AF to some people. Thinking "Is this guy really whining because he's not able to sleep ... come on dude".

I get it, our society has created a culture around how much you can do on the fewest hours of sleep. I bought into that, big time ... hell I was captain of the team.

At one point in my life I was flying 50-100 times a year, in and our of airports like a boss and working from 6am to 8pm and bragging how I was on my 8th coffee of the day.

I can tell you now, losing strategy.

This post really isn't about the value of sleep, but if you want to know more, check out the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, it's a killer read.


My point on the sleep tangent was because, my sleep was suffering, I would then burn out faster the next day, the quality of my work was lower than my standard, and other things that are important in my life (writing, reading, exercise, etc) were all suffering as well. 

So, time for an experiment :)


For those of you that know me, I am into self-experimentation. I even call myself an experimental creative as corny as that is. I love trying things out to see what the impact will be. If you never try, you never know right?


So, I outlined two major structures for my days that will be rinse and repeat for the next little while. The days are structured for when I work from home, versus when I work from the office (yes, thank you for the hybrid life).

Each day is structured to include everything that I want to make sure gets the right attention while also getting me back into a routine that actually allows my beautiful brain to rest and recover!


It's built on Parkinson's Law which has come up in my life more than it should lately. If you don't know, Parkinson's Law states:

work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

My idea being that since I didn't have any structure around the activities and I wasn't gate keeping them, everything was a sloppy mess (and not the good kind).


We'll see how it goes.


Here are a few other productivity points to keep in mind with life, work and whatever else:

  • Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication
  • Develop the ability to protect your time
  • We like to be distracted as it allows us to do less and think less
  • One of the worst things we can do is always make ourselves available
  • Your attention is even more limited than your time
  • Do the worst stuff first


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