This article was supposed to be out more than 24 hours ago, but for some peculiar reason, it simply didn't happen. The reason was that I was seriously overworked - the prototypical excuse people give when you ask them why they didn't do something they promised to do.
In my case, it's a little different story but basically the identical outcome, which means that there is lots of room for improvement in my time management. If we convert my past week into statistics, we get something like this :
Tasks completed:
58 (96 last week, 446 in total)
Habits completed:
112 (151 last week, 499 in total)
Habits failed:
26 (13 last week, 85 in total)
Time management:
~49h of sleep (48,5h last week)
~58.5h of self-imposed work* (42h last week)
~12h of desired leisure (23h last week)
~18h of wasted leisure (17h last week)
~7h of required work (15h last week)
~9,5h of leisure involving people (9,5h last week - consistency xd)
~14h of utility (13h last week)
* self-imposed work = anything, that involves self-improvement but mostly reading, studying or working on some personal project, that I find meaningful in regards to my future but also exercising for instance
Here it is, my weekly record, black on white. So, what exactly did go wrong?
I've been feeling utterly overwhelmed for the entire duration of this particular week. I wasn't sure what the issue was until I looked into the logs. The amount of sleep, procrastination and socializing is roughly the same as the week before, but what is much more interesting is the relationship between self-imposed work, required work and desired leisure.
When you look at the time I spent doing self-imposed work, you will certainly notice that there is a hefty difference between this week and last week - I worked on my desired activities about 18 hours longer and besides that, I managed to cut the time working on pointless chores to half. Terrific news!
Well, not necessarily. Even though measuring my accomplishments by the number of tasks completed per week is not the best form of measuring one's productivity (I am already working on a system, that will more accurately assess my productivity - I hope to finish it until next week so I can discuss my findings in the next post), it's apparent that I accomplished about 2/3 of the tasks compared to last week while working 18 hours more on my desired tasks. I also failed twice as many habits as I did last week.
After thinking about it for a while, I arrived at two conclusions:
1. I spent 11 hours less on desired leisure then I did last week and it might have impacted my overall performance adversely.
I consider myself a rather introverted person which essentially means that I require some alone time to recharge therefore the fact that I sacrificed some of my desired leisure time to work harder might have played a role in the amount of work I accomplished throughout the week.
2. I failed to prioritize my tasks properly.
Last week, I structured my tasks in such a manner, that I had no trouble sticking to the schedule I devised for myself. On the contrary this week, I always felt like my performance was lacking and there was a lot of tasks I failed to accomplish and moved them to the next day. A lot of the times, I underestimated the time that is required to complete a certain task, then I was behind the schedule and felt under pressure thus I didn't have the mental clarity needed to perform optimally. And as an icing on the cake, my coping mechanism was to work for extended periods of time to catch up, instead of taking some time off to lay back, set myself in a good mood and then resume the work.
Having identified these 2 critical issues, I'll try to implement changes that will hopefully improve my performance as well as my quality of life. Last week I forgot that being busy does not equate to being productive but one should strive to learn from their mistakes and try to change one's life for the better.
That's it from me for now, hope you are having a beautiful day - I surely am, because the weather is absolutely gorgeous here and I had a delicious steak for lunch - if not, try to pull the breaks, enjoy the moment for a bit before diving back into the workflow again.
Cheers
Here it is, my weekly record, black on white. So, what exactly did go wrong?
I've been feeling utterly overwhelmed for the entire duration of this particular week. I wasn't sure what the issue was until I looked into the logs. The amount of sleep, procrastination and socializing is roughly the same as the week before, but what is much more interesting is the relationship between self-imposed work, required work and desired leisure.
When you look at the time I spent doing self-imposed work, you will certainly notice that there is a hefty difference between this week and last week - I worked on my desired activities about 18 hours longer and besides that, I managed to cut the time working on pointless chores to half. Terrific news!
Well, not necessarily. Even though measuring my accomplishments by the number of tasks completed per week is not the best form of measuring one's productivity (I am already working on a system, that will more accurately assess my productivity - I hope to finish it until next week so I can discuss my findings in the next post), it's apparent that I accomplished about 2/3 of the tasks compared to last week while working 18 hours more on my desired tasks. I also failed twice as many habits as I did last week.
After thinking about it for a while, I arrived at two conclusions:
1. I spent 11 hours less on desired leisure then I did last week and it might have impacted my overall performance adversely.
I consider myself a rather introverted person which essentially means that I require some alone time to recharge therefore the fact that I sacrificed some of my desired leisure time to work harder might have played a role in the amount of work I accomplished throughout the week.
2. I failed to prioritize my tasks properly.
Last week, I structured my tasks in such a manner, that I had no trouble sticking to the schedule I devised for myself. On the contrary this week, I always felt like my performance was lacking and there was a lot of tasks I failed to accomplish and moved them to the next day. A lot of the times, I underestimated the time that is required to complete a certain task, then I was behind the schedule and felt under pressure thus I didn't have the mental clarity needed to perform optimally. And as an icing on the cake, my coping mechanism was to work for extended periods of time to catch up, instead of taking some time off to lay back, set myself in a good mood and then resume the work.
Having identified these 2 critical issues, I'll try to implement changes that will hopefully improve my performance as well as my quality of life. Last week I forgot that being busy does not equate to being productive but one should strive to learn from their mistakes and try to change one's life for the better.
That's it from me for now, hope you are having a beautiful day - I surely am, because the weather is absolutely gorgeous here and I had a delicious steak for lunch - if not, try to pull the breaks, enjoy the moment for a bit before diving back into the workflow again.
Cheers
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