Cutting Slack with Batching

Hey guys, here to mention a quick (maybe? perhaps?) time management technique that I've been consciously applying for the past couple months to the beat of hours of time saved per week.  It's called Batching, and I'm betting you already use it to some extent.

Since I'm from Maryland, I'm going to explain it through the example of catching crabs.  The delicious kind you dip in Old Bay, not the kind that makes you scratch down there.  When I was growing up, during summers we would drive to the beach and my dad would set up a metal crab trap with some raw chicken as bait (see Exhibit A above), and throw it into the canal.  Now it's waiting time.  Question: If two vehicles of equal size are traveling at a velocity of 50 mph toward each other... how often are you going to check the trap?  Each time you check, there may or may not be any crabs; if there are, you dump them into the bucket and head home.  If there aren't, you take the bucket and head home.  No matter how many crabs are in the trap (equal to or above 0), it usually takes more or less the same amount of time.  Why?  Because most of it involves stopping what you're doing, putting on some pants, walking outside to the canal, pulling up the trap and inspecting it, putting it back in and walking back.  If you're going to check it every 10 minutes you might as well set up camp right there, but if you don't check it all day the bait will disappear without you knowing or the crabs could escape.

In this situation, most people develop a routine so they're not checking too often or too little, right?  However, this routine fails way too often to extend to more everyday tasks, the type that are made so convenient by proximity and technology that you don't notice a large chunk of your time adding up.  That's time that could be going toward your goals, high-order priorities, top-secret missions, etc. but is instead disintegrating in the face of "have to" tasks.

The worst culprit: e-mail.

Checking email is a habit engrained into our society.  We wake up, we check email.  We're about to leave for work, we check email.  We arrive at work, we check email.  And what happens when we check email?  We get Facebook and Google+ notifications, so we go to our web browsers and make a comment, then find an interesting article that someone posted.  Well reading one article never drowned a baby, so pop open another tab and read it, and oooh a link to a video on YouTube.  Man that was awesome, you guys gotta check this out - share it with some friends, batabing bataboom.  We've been awake for less than 2 hours and we've already spent over 45 minutes "just checking email."  It's a distraction, and yet because we depend on it for work, school, family, and friends it feels justifiable.  We'll often check it at least every hour, and if you have a notification system it's even worse!  You know as soon as something comes in, and no matter what you're in the middle of, no matter what it's distracting you from, email suddenly becomes PRIORITY NUMBER ONE.  It could be the mayor asking us to save another drowning baby!

So what I've gone and done is batched my email checking time to: once per day.  That's right, you just heard a part of the internet explode.  Gone are the days of waiting for email notifications and going straight for the inbox as soon as the bell goes off.  What are we, dogs in an experiment by some dude named Pavlov?  And when I do check email, since I know it's the only time I'll do it that day I'm much much more likely to actually respond then and there rather than put it off.  I also strategically created the habit of checking as soon as I get back from work, sometimes with a little bit of timeboxing sprinkles to save even more time.  While it's tempting to check first thing in the morning, managing to avoid this has been a hidden secret to increased productivity at the beginning of the day.

If you want, you can limit your email checking even more, like once per week.  This is especially true if you own a business (!), which I learned thanks to The 4-Hour Workweek, by being smart about your communication methods and giving responsibility to your underlings employees outsourced folks. ~_^  With email batching comes the understanding that "emergencies" are often not emergencies at all.  Problems often take care of themselves without you need to do anything.  If you're really worried about people expecting your reply right away, you can set up an auto-response saying you only check email at x time(s), as a way of training those people.  Besides, if someone really needs to contact you, that's why we have cellphones.  And texting.  Put yourself in the cockpit and choose to do things by your own time convenience.

Many people will recognize "Batching" as a technique not only associated with time batching for one task between longer intervals, but as task batching to tackle several similar tasks at the same time.  You can combine both time batching and task batching to do simple things such as waiting until you have a few errands before going out and doing them in one go, or waiting to go to the post office until you have a few letters/boxes you want to send, or making all of your phone calls at once.  That sort of thing.  You want to put stuff off as long as possible, and then do a lot at once.  I've applied batching to things like:

• Checking post mail (once or twice a week)
• Balancing my check book (once every 2 weeks)
• Adding to my address book (once a month)
• Washing dishes (once every 3 days, so it takes about as long as a TV show episode, which I listen to and use as a timebox while washing)
• Writing my Japan experiences (twice a week, based on the limits of my horrible memory)
• Other cleaning and organizing

Batching works especially fantastically if you have a digital task manager (like Remember the Milk) that can handle recurring tasks.  Or if you can work it into your daily routine it will be an even stronger tool.  You can set up your batching schedule and don't even have to think about it.

The moral of the story: don't waste your time doing something multiple times, if you can get the same or better results doing it less often.  Get the stuff you have to do out of the way so you can focus on what you want to do.

Syk3 out!

Your Goal Blueprint

Yo guys, back with another Time Management technique.  This is going to be a bit of a doozy of a post, and I've accepted that most people aren't going to read the whole thing, but those who do are in for a treat!  Also, my next post won't be for another few weeks since I'll be traveling around Japan for Spring Break.  No, I don't plan on hitting up many beaches, but perhaps a ski slope or arcade or two.

In the last couple of months I've shown you how to organize your week and daily commitments with the unschedule, and attack your projects in the present moment by continuously starting with timeboxing.  This, my friends, is the micro-view of time management, if you will.  While these are great techniques, in the wrong hands they can be ABUSED for evil purposes.  You don't want to abuse my poor children, do you?  If in timeboxing you end up focusing on the nitty-gritty, nose-to-the-grindstone work, it may look productive but its actually just busywork to occupy your mind.  It's not consulting with the overall project blueprint, and that's one thing that leads to workaholism - constant work without regard to priorities or direction.

Today, I want to discuss what I'm going to call the "macro-view" of time management, one of the missing links to efficient and assured goal success.  I'm especially excited about this technique, because while it's partly made up of ideas that were borrowed, infringed, and created through reading about this kind of thing (especially from a book I just read called Awaken Your Strongest Self by Neil Fiore, same dude who wrote Now Habit), what I'm going to show you is something I came up with initially from scratch.  "This" can be used for anything from learning Japanese to studying for tests, to losing weight.  I've used it for all three of these purposes before (and in fact mentioned it when I was studing for the GREs last April), but if it's a goal you can dream of then the possibilities are endless.

But before I unveil the finished project to the world, let me talk about the philosophy behind it.  The other day (literally) I came up with 3 basic principles to ensure goal success, and I found they fit quite nicely with this technique that I've been using for the past year and a half.  Sweet.

1. Confidence. From the outset, you not only believe you will succeed, that you'll become fluent in Japanese, but you KNOW you will.  It's not even a question, you've made up your mind.  It's only a matter of carrying it out.  You don't need to be overflowing with motivation or all-knowing about how you'll do it, you just need to consciously choose the goal and be confident of your success.
2. Direction. You should be able to feel the effects of your goal progress every. single. day.  I'm talking in-your-face seeing, feeling, and tasting some part of the distant reward, living as if you've already achieved your goal.  There's no way you could forget it's there.  By going a step further and quantifying your progress, you can clearly see that you are better off today than you were yesterday, no matter how small, minute, or seemingly insignificant the progress seems.  Even if it isn't measurable, feeling yourself (compared to the you yesterday, not to the people around you) going in an upward direction will bring you far.
3. Enjoyment. Lastly, and most important, you are enjoying the everyday small progress actions that relate to your goal.  It's just fun to do, you might do it anyway without even knowing that its bringing you closer to success.  So forget about the future, distant goal and immerse yourself in the enjoyment.

"In the game of habit change, an immediate reward always wins over a distant and indefinite reward." -Neil Fiore

I've come to believe that if these three elements are in place, no matter what method you choose it's only a matter of time before you realize your goal.  How much time depends on the person and the efficiency of your method.  If you're missing one or more of the three, it may still be possible to reach your goal but your chances of succeeding drastically decrease.  That road may take much longer and be much more painful than it has to be.  Do you want to waste that kind of precious time in life?  PLEASE NOTE: these aren't principles in the sense that if you don't follow them I'll disown you like I did my last two children.  These are general guidelines that seem to work but are open to experimentation and fluctuation.

Now let's take a look at my Goal Calendar for learning Japanese, shall we?

English version

日本語 version

Just like how the weekly unschedule doesn't skip an hour for 6 days, my goal calendar doesn't skip a day for 6 months.  This is the blueprint to your goal.  You can track your progress everyday, and eventually see everything you did from beginning to end.  The idea: set it up so you just check off everyday (ooh, I love that feeling!) and you're assured of reaching your goal.  Success is easy.

From here on out, things will go a lot smoother if you download the templates and mess around with them as I explain it.  Here are the files:

• Goal schedule xls (English)
• Goal schedule xls (Japanese)

Unlike the weekly unschedule, I HIGHLY encourage you to try your hand at putting this together yourself in Excel.  It's not that difficult once you get the hang of typing, copying, and pasting, but if you insist on a PDF version to write it in by hand here it is:

• Goal schedule pdf (English)
• Goal schedule pdf (Japanese)

Then again, if you're going to write in all those days of the week by hand, might as well just write out all your flash cards on paper while you're at it!!  What year is this?!  Does the internet still make that dialing noise when booting up?

Defining Your Goal

Our first objective is to define our goal.  This is perhaps dually the most difficult as well as the most imperative part of the process.  If you don't know where the finish line is, how can you expect to run towards it?  So we are defining our goal in a way that's clear and measurable (see principle #2 above), and gives us some hint about what we need to do.

For example, your goal measurement isn't "to be thin," it's "to be 160 pounds" (don't give me that face!).  It's not "to pass the test with an A," it's something much more in your control like "to replicate and master (using an SRS perhaps?) 500 test questions I'd normally have trouble with."  It's not "to become fluent in Japanese," it's "to learn 2042 kanji (at first, anyway ~_^)."

Like I said, this can get difficult.  And not all goals are going to have a single, straightforward goal measurement; you may end up working towards multiple measurements in one goal calendar, or creating multiple goal calendars to be used in succession.  Any goal or project you can think of can be broken down into skills.  Skills can be measured, and pro mad skillz we're aiming for can be placed at the peak of the graph.  You can even use time as your goal measurement.  Luckily, there's a formula to be the best - just invest 600,000 minutes (or 10,000 hours), and you'll be a world class musician, computer programmer, comic book artist, or whatever you want.  If there's anything beyond that, you'll know what to do when you get there.

Creating Your Time Frame

Now we need a deadline for our goal.  If you have a big test, event, or trip coming up that you're working towards, then use that date.  Don't worry if you don't have a particular date in mind, just make a rough estimate and you can change it later since we're only working with 6 months at a time.  If you're going for 10,000 hours, I'd choose a date about 10 years from now. ~_^  Write that deadline date in the bottom right after "End / 終わり."

Our birthline (get it?) will be set for about 2 weeks from now.  Leading up to that point, your objective is to observe and motivate yourself.  Without trying to change anything, simply observe your normal behavior and record your problematic symptoms (those behaviors inconsistent with your goal and high vision).  Decide whether you really want to commit yourself to this goal, and give yourself the option not to, otherwise you haven't really chosen it.  Read articles about your goal, make a public commitment, and talk with people about it to build up motivation.  You can also use the time to make this goal schedule, so go ahead and put in that birthline date after "Start / 始め."

Let's do some simple math.  First, count the number of days between your birthline and your deadline.  That's right, all of them.  This is your total time.

But doing this every single day sounds like a drag, huh?  If you're following principle #3 it's not going to feel like work, but alright tell you what: you can take off one day a week.  So find [total time - (total time / 7)], and this is your progress time.

I'll take you one further.  If you can maintain your habit for 6 days (and not even continuously, AM I CRAZY?!) you can add a point to the "Non-H / 不習慣" box beside the +.  When you accumulate these points, you can use them to take off a "non-habit / 不習慣" day in addition to your one day off a week. "A break / 休憩?!"  No, no, no... this isn't a break, everyday is going to feel like a break ("Does this really count as work?" Yes, add it to your hours in your weekly unschedule).  But even so, you should reward yourself for taking a step in the right direction toward goal success.  When/if you take this "non-habit / 不習慣" day, don't forget to write a point beside the - box, and try to keep the + and - points about even.  Find [progress time - (progress time / 6)], and you will have your action time.

Back-Time Schedule

Now I'm going to walk you through creating a "back-timing" schedule that goes from the deadline back to the birthline's starting point.  This is the general goal blueprint.

I'll leave the details of your goal measurement up to you.  A certain number of hours?  A certain number of cards in your SRS?  A certain weight and particular body sizes?  A certain number of kanji or vocabulary words?  A combination of the above?  Whatever your ultimate goes is, write it now at the bottom of the calendar after "Goal / ゴール."  Once again, this is your goal measurement.

Can you guess what's coming next?  If you're planning this over years then do this -> goal measurement / # of years (for ex. 2 yrs, 1.5 yrs, 3.25 yrs), and write the answer after "Annually / 毎年."  Cut that number in half and write it after "Biannually / 半年."  Divide that into 6 and write it after "Monthly / 毎月."  Now go back and get the number from your action time.  Do this -> goal measurement / action time, and write the answer after "Daily / 毎日."  Multiple that by 6 and write that answer after "Weekly / 毎週."  I know, this sounds all over the place but just trust me. haha

Implementation

You're almost done!  Man, I'm tired.

Once you decide on your goal, deadline, and daily actions, you should give some thought to your action plans:

1. When will you work on it?
2. Where will you work on it?
3. How will you work on it?

You have those 2 weeks to think about these plans.  Also, make a commitment for what you can do RIGHT NOW (once the birthline hits).  Reviewing 5 minutes in your SRS?  Learning one kanji?  Doing 10 pushups?  Write it after "Right Now / 只今."  This is where it's at, we've come full circle back to the micro-view with timeboxing in the now.

Now print the sucka out and post it on your wall next to your unschedule.

At the top of the first month that you're starting, after "Left / 残り" write the number of months (including that one) remaining in your project.  In the space under the month, write the measurement you entered after "Monthly / 毎月."  This is your goal for the month (assuming you're starting from absolute scratch).  For each day, you will record your progress according to the "Completed? / 出来た？" key in the bottom left.  It's not just check or no-check - it's check or why-aren't-you-checking-me-fool, so you can test yourself and make adjustments as you're going.  Under the "Now / 今" and "Total / 合計" rows, you can write in your current progress.  After you write the "Total / 合計," subtract that from the "Goal / ゴール," and then go to the top of the next month and divide that answer by the number of months "Left / 残り."  If you add what you get to your "Total / 合計," then you have your goal for next month.  Yee-haw.

Your finished products should look something like this:

Psychology GRE

General GREs

日本語

Alright guys, try it out before you bash it too hard.  Experiment, revise, and personalize - man, that could be my catch-phrase or something, sounds slick.  I also recommend only doing one at time until you get really comfortable with it and it becomes a habit, then if you really want you can try two at a time.  This concludes the time management posts that I had been planning, so I'll be focusing on some other stuff in the future.

Once you make your goal calendar, put all your focus and concentration on the action you can do today, the action you can do NOW, which is always the most important action. Tomorrow you'll be grateful you started this yesterday, making it easier for yourself today.

Free Yourself with Timeboxing

It's impossible for you to finish a task.  Finishing is something you experience, not something you do.  What you can do is start a task, so focus on starting over and over.

What is timeboxing?  You're not going to find it in a dictionary, so I'll define it for you.  Simply put, "time boxing" is a time management technique that involves setting a timer, and focusing solely on one task or one set of tasks within that amount of time.  When the timer goes off, no matter where you are in that task progress you put it aside and move on to something else.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by big projects.  When I was in college, I would put off writing papers and studying for tests like no one's business.  I knew I should start early, everyone does.  But I also knew it was going to take hours and bring a lot of stress; besides, I have friends to hang out with and anime to watch.  So eventually the deadline comes looming in, and before I knew it it was the weekend or night before.  "Crap!  Where did the time go?  Alright, I'm just going to work on this paper 24/7 with the time I have left."  However, sure enough I'd fall into Facebook-checking-syndrome for a good hour or so at a time, before I'd remind myself of the paper's importance and get back to work.  By the final morning, running on little or no sleep, it would by some miracle be finished.

A lot of people who go through this same experience conclude that they work best under pressure.  Maybe putting things off to the last minute allows things to actually get done.  Right?  PLEASE TELL ME I'M RIGHT.

Fortunately, there's a much less stressful way of getting through those "big, tough, important" projects than being whipped by threats from your teacher, your boss, your parents, or yourself.  The main point to take away from the cramming experience is this: the deadline.  With timeboxing, you create the deadline.  You control that last-minute tension that gets you moving, the pressure that brings out your deep concentration.

"Limits set you free. Freedom isn’t the absence of limits, it’s the freedom to set your own limits." -Khatzumoto, AJATT

Maybe you've noticed that the hardest part of any task or project is getting started, and once you get past the hurdle of what you're going to do and how you're going to do it it's easy to find your grove and float on.  Starting reveals the real work ahead of you rather than the imagined work that you've feared up until now.  Problems happen when you commit to doing a project - be that writing a paper, reading a textbook, or learning a language - for hours at a time.  You might start off energetic enough, but soon you'll be losing concentration and turning to easily accessible more entertaining alternatives (I wonder if Google+-checking-syndrome has caught on yet...).  "Ahhh, I gotta get on this! What's wrong with me?  Stoopid procrastination. :/"

The idea behind timeboxing is beautifully simple: start a lot.  The smaller the time box, the more times you're able to start your project.  And the more you start, the closer you'll be to experiencing "finishing."  Timeboxing says don't worry about trying to work for hours at a time, especially on something boring.  So aim small, set a timer for a maximum of 30 minutes.  If you can't maintain your concentration for that long, then try 15 minutes.  10 minutes.  Oooh, my favorite: 5 minutes.  Even with 2 minutes, you'd be surprised how much you can accomplish when you're working against the timer.  The key is to find a time limit where you can get into your concentration flow state and maintain it until the end, focusing on the task HERE and NOW.  Working to exhaustion can be okay sometimes, but continuously doing so will implant the idea that the task itself is exhausting.

There needs to be a point at which we can be satisfied with what we've produced on a human level and move on to the next thing.  You know what, I bet you like the idea of "quality over quantity."  Taking your time and creating something really great rather than a bunch of crappy good-for-nothing drafts.  But do you want to know what people who really succeed are aiming for?  They're focusing on 10,000+ crappy starts, which will get the task finished not only faster, but at a higher quality than one sitting there worrying about making something perfect on her first try.  In other words,

Quantity over Quality.

You're starting so many times that the quantity will eventually create quality all on its own from building up those raw experiences.  Final equation: starting + quantity = finishing & quality.  WTF?!

In my post on schedules, I introduced Neil Fiore's idea of counting your work in 30 minute blocks.  Timeboxing is, well, an evolved form of that idea.  Apparently it's mentioned in books like Eat That Frog (which I'd like to read one day), but I learned about it from AJATT through my Japanese studies.

One cool way I've been using timeboxing is to do something for a little bit every hour.  That "something" for me is reviewing Japanese through Anki (my SRS), and that "little bit" is 5 mins. at a time.  When those blocks hit 30 mins. I add them to my Unschedule.  Basically, if you break up starting your time boxes into small chunks every hour, it never feels like real work - even though at the end of the day, I have one hour of Japanese reviewing and half an hour of Japanese learning and review preparation to show for it.  Time over the course of a day can slip by, and this way you can link your day together with the time devoted to realizing your dream.

Other ways you can get even more out of timeboxing:

• Prioritize what you want to accomplish today, and start the highest priority task using a time box before working your way down the list.  I recommend beginning with a small time limit in the first round, 10 minutes or less, just so you can get that first hurdle out of the way.
• Do something REALLY fun before and after the timeboxing, especially if you're going for as long as 30 min. blocks in one shot.  At the very least, take a short break so you can recharge before turning up your concentration levels again.
• The task that you're timeboxing doesn't have to be super boring.  Try it with fun things too so that you can have that devoted time to get really into it.
• Something that's really helped me lately is focusing more on the timeboxing than the clock.  When you worry about things like, "why isn't it 5 o'clock yet? I want to go home!" or "I can only get stuff done until 11pm then I have to go to bed, I'll never finish this in time!" then its just going to stress you out.  Trust in the time box. Simply focus on the next thing you can do of highest priority, and accept the small step forward that you've made within that limit.

If anyone has anything else to comment on this form of time management, I'd love to hear it.  Take care, guys.

This post brought to you by 13 sessions of 10 minute timeboxing, taking a lot of crappy steps and just putting them together.

Soon Recruiting: Your Goals and Dreams

Been thinking about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life lately.  As time draws closer to Jasmin and I going back to the states in August, those questions have been eating at me: "What are you going to do for a job when you get back?"  "Are you going into grad school, if so which one and when?"  "Where are you going to live?"  Of course, the last question depends on the first two.  And the first two depend on WHATEVER I FEEL LIKE. lol  So that's the question: what do I feel like?

My plan upon graduating college has been: 1. go to grad school for a doctorate in Clinical Psychology, 2. graduate 5-7 years later and get a license to practice, 3. open up a private practice, 4. pwn like a boss.  This is how I wanted to use my psychology major, as a way of helping people through their psychological crises using strength-based therapy, an optimistic approach emphasizing one's positive attributes rather than one's debilitations.  I've always enjoyed helping friends with various issues and liked connecting with people (not to mention learning about myself) on a psychological level.  As preparation for this path, I worked during summers with people suffering from mental illness, and while in Japan took both the General GRE and the Psychology Subject Test so that I could send the scores to prospective grad schools.

But when I sat back, outlined my ideas, and thought about it... the clinical psych plan seemed somewhat shallow, especially now that I'm out experiencing life in the "real world."  I know I want to do something in psychology, but is Clinical really the way to go?  Or is working with people with milder psychological disorders in Counseling more interesting?  Or should I look deeper into I/O (Industrial Organizational) psych, since "engage and motivate ordinary people" seems to spark something inside of me lately?  I don't even know if I really want to go to grad school anymore, since I seem to be doing fine learning things on my own and have increasingly negative opinions about schooling.

I took a big leap forward 3 months ago when I realized just how much of an influence reading one book had on me.  That book?  The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play by Neil Fiore, which I introduced in a recent blog post on schedules.  It put into perspective how I can use what I'm doing now in Japan (utilizing motivation and anti-procrastination methods to learn Japanese and help students learn English) as preparation for a career in psychology.  More than that, it gave me a model to aim for; I can become a counseling psychologist like Neil Fiore.  Instead of committing to a 5-7 year doctorate program because I like clinical psychology and seeing where it takes me, I'm committing to a final goal and taking the necessary steps to reach it whether that requires a doctorate degree, masters degree, or simply more work.  And then I'll see where it takes me. :p

Unfortunately, that realization wasn't enough for me to jump headfirst quite yet.  It wasn't enough to answer with confidence the two questions I first asked at the top, either.  I needed another reason to go in that direction.  So yesterday I was sitting around and decided to do a 10-minute timebox (look for a proper post on timeboxing in the near future lol) on thinking about this problem.  I looked over my outline and picked out things I knew for sure:

• I want to work with a mild-moderate disorder community, not severe.
• I don't want to use medications.
• I want to work 1-on-1.
• I want training on how to work with real people, not get stuck in research.
• I want to do something with the following keywords:
• Time Management
• Goal Achievement
• Scheduling
• Pull Method
• Flow State
• Peak Performance
• Grit

Maybe I've been consuming too much anime and manga lately, but watching these characters work hard to achieve their dreams made me think about my own dreams a bit.  You know, those goals that get me all fired up, the ones I devote myself to and want to see through to the end no matter what (besides you, Jasmin!).  The one I think about the most these days is, well, to become fluent in Japanese.  I wouldn't say I'm quite there yet, but I'm getting closer thanks to using techniques found in many of the above keywords.

In psychology, the phrase "I want to help people" is so overused.  Who do you want to help, what do you want to help them do, and how do you want to help them?  Do I want to use my experience in Japan and help people learn Japanese?  Or do I want to use the techniques I learned to help people learn other languages?  Or could I perhaps want to use these techniques to help people do something entirely different?

So then I took a break, watched some TV, and it hit me.  The idea came so simply, so beautifully.

I want to help other people... achieve their dreams.

This "epiphany" is surely something I've thought about before, but this time it's a solid final goal.  My dream is to give other people the ability to realize theirs.  It wasn't long before I concluded that the place people are most likely to be achieving their dreams is at work.  Don't give me that look! >:O  In theory, people are getting into their respective lines of work because they enjoy it, and they have goals within that work.  What general obstacles would they have that I could assist on?  Well, procrastination, trouble balancing life and work, lack of motivation, inability to come up with goals or plan ahead, exhaustion from over-work, etc.  Gets me excited just thinking about it!

And with that, we've come full circle back to The Now Habit, which I can look at in a new perspective.  I'm actually currently re-reading the book in Japanese.  My next step is to send a message to the author, Neil Fiore.  I want to ask him stuff like, what kind of counseling he does and how it differs from I/O psych; what his inspiration was in terms of other books, research, etc.; what sort of part-time job or schooling I can use to prepare myself to do his kind of work.  I also want to use this blog as a way to play with some ideas that relate to the psychology I want to do.  Wish me luck!

If you have any questions or comments about the methods I present I'd love to hear them!

I Make Schedules

Some have called it an obsession.  Others have even attempted to call it a compulsion. lol  But it's not OCD (the psychological disorder characterized by intruding and unwanted obsessive thoughts followed by repetitive, often unrelated, compulsions to clear those thoughts away), it's organization.  This will be the first in a series of posts on Time Management, so I can take some time to explain how I... well, get shit done.

Schedules help you to create or continue good habits, or to effectively destroy bad habits. They also allow you to plan your next move in advance so you can press go and focus on the here and now, without needing to stop to think about where you'll end up.  My goal of efficiently controlling and organizing my life has led me to create my own weekly schedules, finding inspiration from various sources but more or less starting from scratch.  MS Excel is my tool of choice for creating the templates you'll see below.

Work Week Schedule

In college, as every single roommate I've ever had will attest, at the beginning of every semester I would make a schedule of my typical week and tape it on my door.  I just sort of came up with it in my first semester in order for:

1. Me to know what classes I had, and when and where they were
2. Me to keep track of the weekly meetings of all the clubs I joined
3. My roommates to know when I was busy so they didn't call and bother me, lol.  Or so they could come and join me if they wanted to, I guess. :p

Basically it gave me a look at my week in a clear and easy format I could understand.  Then I knew when I had free time to goof off.  After a while I got annoyed with my roommates' organization and made them schedules too. XD

Freshman year model:

Senior year model:

This is a pretty classic Monday - Friday, 9-5 schedule format.  It's probably more or less what you think of when you imagine a weekly schedule, with some minor tweaks; organizing my meals and gym times and such allowed friends to meet up at certain places on certain days without having to decide every time.  As simple as this schedule was, I would say it was one of my secrets to getting a 3.94 GPA in college and holding a Vice President position in one of my clubs.

Life Unschedule

If you thought that was organized, check out my schedule now:

Yeah, I know right.  You probably think I'm crazy.  On the surface, the time slots have now been broadened to two pages, covering all 24 hours for 6 days in a given week, broken up into 30 minute blocks.  It's a MUCH more complete look at your time.  And instead of simply making one for a whole semester or time period, this is intended to be made anew each week, so that you become accountable for every half hour time block.

Why would someone go that far?  My inspiration for this came primarily from a book I read called "The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play", written by a counseling psychologist named Neil Fiore.  Unlike my Work Week Schedule, Fiore's intention for his  "unschedule" isn't primarily a clear look at your week - it's to increase your work quality and efficiency and decrease your procrastination (or what you think is procrastination). Oh, and enjoy life throughout the process.

Turns out many of us don't cut ourselves enough slack for goofing off.  We need to make plenty of play time in our lives if we hope to get any real, focused work completed.  Let's define work as, "a process towards a goal that will improve yourself as a human being or extend opportunities in your life."  That's not a real quote, I just made that up.  My current "work" projects are learning Japanese, learning psychology, and creating language learning resources for schools.  So my objective is to rack up points by putting in the minutes (that's what hours are made of ~_^) for each of those projects.

First thing's first.  Don't start by filling in your schedule with work projects you determine need to get done RIGHT NOW OMFG.  Start with your dessert, son.  Add video games, drawing, chilling with friends, reading manga, whatever leisure you need to enjoy a fulfilled life.  Not just "I have to beat this game 'cause I've had it forever and it needs to get done" kind of leisure, but the "I don't care if I have to skip around or stop halfway through I just want to enjoy my time" truly fun kind.  Then add things that need to get done so daily life can function: sleep, meals, chores, exercise, appointments (classes, job), commutes, etc.  Don't forget any special events or meetings you've committed to that week.  I recommend taking a week to record what you do on a usual basis and how long it takes.

You've now painted a realistic picture of your week.  You should be left with some empty spaces - the REAL time you have to get that work done, like studying, class readings, or writing that book.  No, you don't have 48 hours over the weekend to finish your English paper due on Monday.  But then, what's the best approach to take with the remaining time?  Fiore recommends aiming for 30 minutes of work at a time.  We in the know call this "timeboxing," an AWESOME time management strategy I'll save for a later post.  This gives a definite start and definite end to a short amount of time entirely focused on your work.  For best results, try doing something really fun before and after this block, and then work from the highest priority task on down.  You want to focus on starting your work over and over and over and over.

The more 30 minute sessions you tackle, the more points you accumulate.  You can see exactly how much work you've done over the given week.  According to Fiore: don't work more than 5 hours in a day, and more than 20 hours a week.  Yes, you're right, no one has the right to limit what you want to do.  I'm going to say that again - "...limit what you want to do."  Get it?  If you don't want to go further, don't. ;)  The catch is you have to be at full concentration during each of those half hour blocks or it doesn't count.  Once you've gone 30 minutes, you can fill it in your schedule.  So we're looking at aiming for filling in 20 concentrated hours of personal development every week, and those numbers add up fast.  BTW, the reason there are 6 days and not 7 is because you are using 1 non-scheduled day to rest; I make my day Sunday but any day is cool.  Get back to those video games, boi.

The best week I've ever done is 23.5 hours, the week of 5/30/2011 when I was studying for the GREs.  I first used The Now Habit strategies to study Japanese after I read the book in early 2010.  I'm now reading the book in Japanese (in fact, I've only ever used the Unschedule in Japanese, known as the すきま時間予定表 in 日本語, I'm just showing you examples in English for the purpose of communication, so sorry for misspellings and such lol), and considering becoming a psychologist like Fiore.  So it's had a pretty big impact on me, and I recommend reading the actual book if you get the chance.

Make One Yourself

Schedules may not work for everyone, but if the reasons I listed above sound logical enough then maybe you want to try it out.

You have two choices if you want to use my templates: print out the pdf and write it in by hand, or download the xls and try your hand at making it digitally.  Unfortunately, using Excel it's all manual and takes some practice to get the hang of copying and pasting blocks, changing the borders, changing the background colors, etc.  But if can figure it out, you can add whatever you want and color them.  Feel free to change the template as you wish to suit your needs, as I did.

[Work Week Schedule]

For who? College students, workers, anyone with a set Mon-Fri schedule.
Advantages: A quick look at your week so you can see your priorities.
Disadvantages: Limited in view, doesn't help with actually doing the work.
Download:

• English pdf
• Japanese pdf
• English xls
• Japanese xls

[Life Unschedule]

For who? Anyone who has work and thinks procrastination is limiting them.
Advantages: You can see where all of your time goes.
Disadvantages: You need to make a new one every week, and that takes time.
Additional notes: Last year I scaled down my efforts to record every single 30 minute block, so now I simply fill in work blocks and big events after I make the initial version (it's in Japanese but take a look at an example of going from this to this).  Also, I separate Work from SRS, which isn't necessary, but it works for me to put things into perspective.
Download:

• English pdf
• Japanese pdf
• English xls
• Japanese xls

I think that's enough from me for one week.  Good luck with that organization, folks.