Hey 👋 I'm Juan, and today I want to share something that happened to me this week. Recently, I started working in a new place, I moved, I’m working on multiple personal projects at the same time, I started writing, I’m still reading almost every day, and I’m trying to have a personal and social life. Complicated, as you may understand. I started to feel really stressed; I was losing my mind. So I did one of the things that calms me the most: go for a walk. The solution to my problem, and maybe yours too, is right below.
Why 🤔?
Maybe you are asking yourself why I wrote this post. For two reasons: 1st, I might forget how I organized my calendar and my routine, the mindset I need to stay calm, and why I'm doing it. 2nd, because I’m quite sure there are people out there just like me who are coming to hasty conclusions when they are just unorganized.
How 😎?
The system that I’m going to share is born from the combination of my own experience trying to schedule my life and the knowledge of Noah Kagan in Million Dollar Weekend. So let's divide it into easy, understandable steps:
What Do You Need to Do 🗺️?
If you are like me or my girlfriend, you get lost among all the things you want or have to do. That's why we need to define long-term goals that help us stay focused. We want to make a list of the things that need to be done in the future. In our case, we look 6 months ahead, but you can go even further if you want. If you don’t want to think about it, just stay with 6 months.
Great, here’s my list:
- Write 100 posts on Medium and Dev
- Finish 6 more books
- Finish 3 applications
- Travel around Argentina
These are some of the things that I need to finish in 6 months. I hope you did yours.
Steps 👣
On my list, I have four goals; you can have as many as you need or want. Now we need to divide them into things that we can repeat in order to reach our goals. In my case, it would be:
- Work on my own applications
- Write
- Read
These three easy activities may seem silly at the time, but they'll make more sense once we put everything together.
Schedule 📅
We have our goals, we have our steps, and we are almost there. Now we need to schedule, but before doing that, you need to make another list, yep, another one. We need to write down our goals for the end of the week. These are more specific things that should be done in the time of the steps we defined before.
In my case, for this week, I need to have done these things:
- [ ] Finish the Customers screen; it should be responsive.
- [ ] Connect the Customers UI with the DB.
- [ ] Finish the authentication.
- [ ] Make a list of future posts.
- [ ] Check for new books.
And so on... The point is, these are some of the tasks that I should finish before Saturday, and they should be done in the steps/time categories we defined before.
Connect Customers UI with the DB -> Work on my own applications
Make a list of future posts -> Write
Check for new books -> Read
Easy, right? Now let’s give them space in our calendar, but before that, I want you to take into consideration that you should dedicate more time in your day to the activity that will get you closer to your most important goal for the next 6 months. In my case, my most important goal is finishing my applications, so I’ll spend more time working on my apps than anything else.
Finally, your calendar should look something like this:
My day is not always like that, and it depends on the way I want to handle my workload.
Special Events 🎂
There are times when you have to do something just once. Those things are your priority number one. Put them at the top of your list, create a task on Google Calendar, and get them out of your roadmap as soon as possible. Don’t do like me because I’ve come to notice that these are things that can explode in your face if you don't handle them on time and keep postponing them. Do you need to go to the doctor? Schedule the task, get the appointment, and go. Don’t waste peace of mind telling yourself, “I’ll do it once I finish this.” You and I both know that time will never come.
Perfect It 🔁
Every Saturday, reserve 15 or 30 minutes to check your performance over the week. Check if you could accomplish what you set out to do. If you did and felt okay with the workload, keep going. If you couldn't finish most of the things you listed, don’t worry, you need to reschedule. Pay attention to the details and ask yourself what went wrong. Maybe you just need to move your time categories/steps in the calendar to find a better place, or maybe you need to lower your expectations. Maybe you are overestimating the amount of work you can handle.
It’s worth mentioning that you shouldn’t fill your schedule completely. You want to leave empty space for yourself, your loved ones, or the unforeseen events that will inevitably happen.
Mindset 🧠
As I told you at the beginning of this post, I found myself really stressed. When I finished my schedule, I felt really calm because I realized that there wasn't as much to do as I thought. Besides that, I also realized that I had become used to overthinking what I have to do, constantly asking myself if I’m doing the right thing. We can’t control everything; it’s better to get a plan, find things that you can control, and stick to them.
I would love to create a really successful application, but I can’t really control success. Instead, I can control how many applications I create. So that’s what I do: I focus my mind and my effort on developing as many applications as I can, trying to learn as much as I can from each one of them.
Time for Being a 👦 and Time for Being a 🤖
There is a time to think, to feel, to analyze, and to dream, but extend that too much, and you'll find yourself trapped in a storm in your own mind. Always looking for a solution, preventing, visualizing, analyzing, optimizing. Being a victim of your own thoughts for nothing to happen in the end. No more. I propose something different: get a dream, get a plan, get a limit or a line. Stick to your plan and do, do, and keep doing. Once you get to the line, you can start analyzing again to get a new plan, a new limit, and start all over again. I’ve found that to be the best solution for my constant and paralyzing anxiety.
The End 🏁
You’ve found the line, which means we’ve reached the end. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it, consider following me, liking, and if you really enjoyed or found it useful, please help me to buy a new book, with just $20 would be enough for me to get The Art and Business of Online Writing
[---------------------------------------------------------] 0% of $20, let's buy me a book
Also, let me know if you want me to keep my posts short like this one or if you prefer them longer like before.
Credit
If you like the picture of the post consider checking the work of Tim his the owner.
Top comments (16)
No le pares a los comentarios, la mayoria de los gringos se la pasan hablando de timeboxing. Es el consejo universal gringo para organizar tu dia. No mata a nadie y menos a los ansiosos (yo que soy ansiosa no me he muerto todavia por tener mi google calendar todo bloqueado y con bloques de "tomar cafe", "jugar con mis perritos" o "jugar videojuegos").
Si hubieras hecho el post en español seguro sale alguien diciendote "tu puedes hacer esto porque no tienes hijos! tu no sabes lo que es tener una vida tan dificil como la mia" porque ya lo viiii en un video en youtube sobre este tema en español jajajaja
Asi que rela. Todo el mundo es un critico.
Lo que si puedo decir, como alguien que usa tu metodo, es que hay que hacer un shift de mindset: esto es planificar el dia, no es que tu dia tenga que ajuro ser asi porque tu no sabes que pueda suceder. Mas bien, puedes mover tus bloques o inclusive... ignorarlos! 😂 y asi? cero stress mi pana ~(Uw U
Ojala puedas irte de paseo por Argentina pronto! Siempre es refrescante y desestresante pasear y conocer :3
Saludeishons! ~
JAJAJ, tal cual. Además, estuve investigando y entre los inmensos beneficios del "time-boxing" están reducir el estrés, reducir la ansiedad, evitar el burn-out y reducir la procrastinación. Muchas gracias por tu motivación, realmente lo aprecio.
Timeboxing doesn’t work for people prone to anxiety, such stuff kills them. And even in simpler cases: I’m pretty sure it’s not very scalable and will exhaust a person in a long run.
But yeah, it’s probably the best (and the only?) way to be 100% productive. If that’s the goal 😉
Agree with that... I used to fill up my calendar like that. If I miss one thing off my calendar then damage control kicks in... I start shifting and shuffling around other tasks to accommodate uncompleted ones... and then eventually end up with regrets of not completing things on time...
maybe I am just not as good at time estimation or time management as others.
I complete understand, maybe something that I forgo to mention on the post is that we shouldn't feel bad because we couldn't complete all the tasks of the day. For example this last days I've been sick and my productivity went down, that's fine, I'm sick. The idea is having a road-map that help us keeping track of what we are doing and what we need to do, that way we don't waste energy having to think about this every time. Thanks for sharing your opinion; I consider it really interesting.
Nah, that’s a common scenario I believe 😅 this damage control thingy is something I even tried to take care of using some kind of a system and calendar automations… But the truth is, it just makes it too complicated and the goal of time management is to simplify the whole thing to have consistent and calm control and do more with less efforts.
I've doing it for years and I can ensure that I feel more exhausted and stressed out when I don't do it
Wow I didn't know that. Here I'm talking from my personal experience and the only thing I found to calm me is knowing what to do and when to do it. Thanks for your comment
I see that many of you feel more anxious knowing what you have to do. The question that pop-ups on my mind from this is: Maybe that's yourself telling you that you aren't doing what you have to do or maybe your previous decisions are forcing you to do things that you don't want. Either way, isn't that ok? It's your conscious guiding you. Why fight against it?
Esperando los posts sobre el punto 4
Dentro de poco
Thanks for sharing your process, very insightful. It's interesting how different we can be. I know for me having everything in my calendar as blocks stresses me out.
Jajaja. I guess what stresses me out is not knowing what I have to do because then is when my mind starts to tell me that I'm doing nothing and that there are things that require my attention. Thanks for reading and sharing your opinion; I really appreciate it.
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