Switching Gears Is Hard!

I love what I do. I work for myself. I go to sleep whenever I want. I wake up whenever I want. I take a vacation whenever I want.

With so much freedom, discipline becomes very important in being productive. It's dangerously easy to end the day having done absolutely no work. While this is ok, and downright necessary, sometimes, it can easily turn into a bad habit.

I try to counter that by writing a detailed to-do list the night before and knowing exactly what I am going to work on. Having vague tasks like "Work on Bob's project" is ambiguous and just makes me procrastinate doing the work, since I don't really know what to work on. "Finish video encoding module" is much easier to start and finish.

That solves half the problem. The other half, which is far more difficult, is switching gears. Once I work on one project and finish what I needed to do for that day, I need to start on the next project. While it sounds easy, it ends up being quite a bitch!

I've tried taking breaks, and I just end up taking an all-day break. If I separate my sit-down work with work meetings, I have absolutely no desire to work again after the meeting.

Even now, when I should get started on the next project, I'm writing a blog post! Anyone have any suggestions?