In each moment of our life we practice something.
At this moment I am practicing the skill of writing. Earlier I was practicing the “skill” of Monopoly Go. While that sounds silly, it’s also where my time and energy went while the app was open.
I have not been taking the time to organize my life and prioritize on a regular basis, a skill I’ve let get rather rusty.
It either feels like I’m racing to play catchup or sitting there feeling tired inside wasting precious minutes with foolhardiness in an attempt to enjoy a moment.
At one time in my life I was pretty organized and I was able to take time to relax.
Instead I just feel the drain of remembering things I forgot to do.
I need to make more time to plan out how I use my time.
Make the time to make a schedule you’ll follow
The first few weeks of a new habit forming routine are brutal.
At first the planning will be ambitious. Each minute carefully allocated as if an AI put it together for you. Only you know it wasn’t AI, because AI knows you aren’t superhuman and tells you that.
Inevitably the whirlwind of life kicks in and the overcommitting begins.
Some real life catastrophe or another arrives and the next thing you know you are wildly behind.
A good plan has some slack that allows for bad things.
This whole year I’ve been running two jobs at once. This has made it really hard to find time to plan while doing both, excercising, reading, writing the daily articles, dealing with two podcasts and still feeling on top of things. Hard is not impossible.
I know how to get control again and I’m partly writing this blog to hold myself accountable.
In a few months you’ll see the, “Here’s how I cleaned up my mess of a life” article.
My life isn’t a mess, I am having trouble finding time for fun lately because I’m not taking the time to plan for cleaning.
Since I don’t follow my own schedule, I am not getting things done quickly enough to let myself enjoy the wasteful sides of life.
Sometimes you need to slow down to make time for more
I haven’t pushed music too hard this year.
My bandwidth is taxed as I become a food influencer person that also drives people around for money. As I need to remind myself, the debt is finite and I will clear it. To do that has me going stupid hard on Uber when I’m out there.
When I get home at 5 AM, I’m not that good at being good to go when I wake up the next day.
By the time I get through all my daily stuff it’s nearly time to hit the Uber streets again.
There may be a point where I can’t write every day (but the challenge is to produce despite the obstacles). I know that at some point this week I need to take a focused hour to make sure I list out my miscellaneous chores. Then I need to make sure those chores get time in my calendar. I literally need to delete like 30 seconds out of an interview and I keep forgetting because I never actually plan my week’s minutiae.
The big picture obligations are clear and the rest of it is fitting it in whenever.
Until the cycle changes I’ll never see the end of Phantom Liberty, or at least before my debt is cleared.
The point is while the hustle at this pace is temporary, I need to prove I can manage things while pushing in full gear, or I’m not really that dude.
Taking an hour or two to plan the specifics will compound into video games and recording sessions.
It’s mentally exhausting to track everything in your head, put it into some planning device
The moments of lethargy and waste are a response to the effort used to track everything up top.
A good organizational system with a plan that takes into account all your projects just breeds peace of mind.
Instead of wondering what needs to be done, you create a cheat sheet that lists it all for you. One that you maintain, with habits that are built to make sure you use it. Success comes with more complications than a lil brain can handle without some help.
We live in an era of AI assistants, once your life tasks are digitized, organized and nurtured, some AI tool can help you decide the best times to do everything.
AI works properly when you can communicate with context. You can think of your planning and prioritizing as a way to add context to your life. Instead of just chasing tasks with fervour because you remember you need to do it ADHD style, you can decide the best time to do things.
By allocating an hour or two to random tasks, ones that you delegate for this hour, you will know that the task will get done and not interrupt your flow to achieve it, all in an effort to not forget to do it.
The rest of it is expectation management.
I look forward to cleaning up my head with good planning techniques.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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