I’ve recently been liking using usemotion.com to schedule my day. You tell it all your tasks and when they’re due and connect your calendars and it automatically schedules all your tasks and blocks them out in your calendar (intelligently sorting them so that they all get done on time, and automatically resolving conflicts when meetings pop up)
Not Peter, but something I’d personally add is to schedule using 30-minute slots, unless the nature of the activity precludes it (e.g. attend a concert, fly to Nassau). The two main benefits I noticed from imposing this time limit are (1) being able to focus much more intensely on the task at hand and (2) being able to work, rather than procrastinate, on tasks I find aversive. Here is an example of someone who applies this kind of “timeboxing” for learning languages, although he uses 15-minute intervals (I haven’t experimented much with different durations, and wouldn’t be surprised if quarter-hour slots work even better than half-hour slots, though at some point the costs of context-switching and time-keeping will exceed the benefits of increased focus and motivation).
My model of research seems like it happens in hours-long continuous threads, rather than 30 min blocks (let alone blocks that you can specific in advance)
At least in my experience, there’s nothing about research that requires engaging with it in “hours-long continuous threads”; what you do e.g. in a single two-hour session can be done in four half-hour sessions, on four successive days. I think the limiting factor is rather having sufficiently many concurrent (and non-time-sensitive) research projects that you can fill an entire workday with 30-minute slots each allocated to a different project. That may be challenging for some researchers, but it’s really not a problem if you write encyclopedias for a living.
I’ve tried a thousand times to make myself a schedule and live by it, but I’m so disorganized that everything breaks down for me. I’ve also thought about the fact that I need some sort of handy calendar to keep track of things. I forget about paper notebooks, I need something electronic, handy and a constant reminder.
I’ve recently been liking using usemotion.com to schedule my day. You tell it all your tasks and when they’re due and connect your calendars and it automatically schedules all your tasks and blocks them out in your calendar (intelligently sorting them so that they all get done on time, and automatically resolving conflicts when meetings pop up)
I’ve been doing this too since 2015 and it also works well for me.
Ha, before reading this comment, I came here to write:
“I have found this technique very useful, and I believe Peter Wildeford has been using it, too.”
Nice!
Gee! Are there any other learnings you wish to add to this post?
Not Peter, but something I’d personally add is to schedule using 30-minute slots, unless the nature of the activity precludes it (e.g. attend a concert, fly to Nassau). The two main benefits I noticed from imposing this time limit are (1) being able to focus much more intensely on the task at hand and (2) being able to work, rather than procrastinate, on tasks I find aversive. Here is an example of someone who applies this kind of “timeboxing” for learning languages, although he uses 15-minute intervals (I haven’t experimented much with different durations, and wouldn’t be surprised if quarter-hour slots work even better than half-hour slots, though at some point the costs of context-switching and time-keeping will exceed the benefits of increased focus and motivation).
It seems that your main work is research (correct me if wrong), so I’m surprised you work in 30 min blocks
Yes, that is my main work. Could you elaborate on why you find this surprising?
My model of research seems like it happens in hours-long continuous threads, rather than 30 min blocks (let alone blocks that you can specific in advance)
At least in my experience, there’s nothing about research that requires engaging with it in “hours-long continuous threads”; what you do e.g. in a single two-hour session can be done in four half-hour sessions, on four successive days. I think the limiting factor is rather having sufficiently many concurrent (and non-time-sensitive) research projects that you can fill an entire workday with 30-minute slots each allocated to a different project. That may be challenging for some researchers, but it’s really not a problem if you write encyclopedias for a living.
I’ve tried a thousand times to make myself a schedule and live by it, but I’m so disorganized that everything breaks down for me. I’ve also thought about the fact that I need some sort of handy calendar to keep track of things. I forget about paper notebooks, I need something electronic, handy and a constant reminder.
have you tried starting first with having the schedule that’s probably going to happen? Consider it a prediction rather than a schedule