Schedule Play Before Work
The boys at Trizle make an excellent point that would definitely ring true amongst the 30 years and under crowd.
They put together two examples for completing a project. One puts work first over a seven day period, the other makes schedules of ‘play’, concerts and the like, while working in between.
Instead of driving your entire heart, body, and soul into every minute of your working hours, you instead went through a similar route:
- 1st day: Go over notes.
- 2nd day: Go over notes.
- 3rd day: Go over notes.
- 4th day: Write 1st page.
- 5th day: Edit 1st page.
- 6th day: Write 2nd page.
- 7th day: Write 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th pages. Proofread, cite, review, design cover letter, print, yadda.
“Since I have limited time to work on my paper, I will have to work more efficiently. Therefore, I will have to smartly plan my working schedule.”
- 1st day: “Crap! I only have four days to write ten pages. I’ll go over notes and write the first 3 pages today, so I don’t feel guilty about going to the concert tomorrow.”
- 2nd day: Fun-sexy-time! Attend concert.
- 3rd day: “The concert energized me. Let’s write the next 3 pages.”
- 4th day: Fun-sexy-time! Attend ballgame.
- 5th day: “My morale’s rockin’. Again, let’s write the next 3 pages.”
- 6th day: Fun-sexy-time! Run the College Invitational.
- 7th day: Write final page. Deal with logistics. Finish!
This is how those guys who rocked final exams in high school also managed to make it to all the parties.
Should You Really Be Playing? – [Trizle]
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Comments
Kenny says on March 15th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
There is a whole book written about this idea. “The Now Habit – A Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt Free Play” by Neil Fiore. You can call it “The Now Habit” for short. I’ve almost finished reading it and find that it is extremely powerful when combined with “Getting Things Done.” The book talks about when you work on a major project, don’t focus on the whole thing outside of the planning stages. Once you get down to work, just focus on the next action in the project for 30 minutes. I plan on blogging about this some this weekend.
Nenad Ristic says on March 16th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Good idea… I think that doing things this way would help me avoid the cycle that I often find myself getting into, where I work non-stop until I get fed up with it, then play for days, and often struggle to get back to the original project.
I guess its all about finding the balance…
Albert says on March 16th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Nenad, I am exactly like you lol. I would work really hard with motivation, then I feel like I need a rest and don’t really get back to word until a period of time.
I tend to fit the second category.