day ten
3 min readMar 23, 2020
- I’m becoming slightly obsessed with better time tracking, hoping it then leads to better time management, which in turn helps maintaining a schedule end eventually build better routines
- last weak already showed me that just taking a log isn’t very effective if I don’t do it consistently during the course of the day — so I give the journal another try, really just focusing on a skeleton during the day, maybe extending with some narrative in the evening depending on how I feel (how much time I have, how much I have to say, how tired I am)
- apart from capturing times and events, I want to give the pomodoro technique a go. hopefully this way I build the tools to both plan ahead and then validate how well I’m doing
- today so far the morning routine with mediation, dog walk and coffee was fine, but it took me until 11:14 to realise that “oh, I wanted to keep tracking events during the day” and then it was already 12:19 when I actually started (to be fair, I had a call in between). even then I had to consciously pull myself back from creating an excuse to read stuff and “close some tabs” before I start writing (frankly, reading stuff mostly just leads me to opening some more tabs — not the result I’m looking for right now)
- 12:27 — checking if N is on a call and trying to sync on lunch plans and our schedule for the afternoon (partial success as she’s on a call). I’ll respond to some Slack messages and read some stuff that I stopped myself from reading earlier
- 12:39–13:05 — managed to do some reading and actually closed two tabs without opening any new ones
- 13:05–14:00 — lunch break
- 14:00 — check Slack, do some “reactive work” plus finish washing the dishes (a bit of jumping back and forth, but mainly productive stuff without unnecessary diversions)
- 14:35 — I wanted to do a “pomodoro cycle”, but it’s impossible to do so without shutting down Slack first. closed Slack and managed to read some stuff
- 15:00 — reopening Slack now and then taking a coffee break
- 15:30 — back at the laptop, started a meeting but stopped after 15mins as one participant was missing. will take a very short nap and continue from 16:00
- [quick stop at 16:54 to update this] 16:00 — I’m grateful for my strong napping game: I managed to improve my energy level and was ready for the call. I have to say tho that barely any of the calls go as planned: they don’t start on time or get interrupted, we find it harder to place ourselves or to stick to the agenda
- 17:07 — took a short break and had maybe 10mins chat with N. got back to the laptop wanting to do a “focus session” until 17:30, but of course I already lost 5mins to Slack. duh. anyway, I progressed some tasks and overall feel like I was structured and mostly focused today. however, I’m struggling to say with confidence that I performed better or produced more (visible?) output than previous days. let’s see how the next days go, but I may have to revisit and adjust expectations also, not just my schedule or modus operandi
- 18:00 — done with work for today. I had a slight feeling of anxiety thinking whether I will trigger anyone if I explicitly flag in my Slack status that I’m done for today. but what can they do about it…?
- 18:15–19:15 — walk the dog
- 23:28 — that’s a wrap for today: the evening was nice and I need my sleep now. goal for tomorrow: close 15 browser tabs (currently I have 29)
