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?

And The Quest Continues...

For the past who-knows-how-long, I've been trying to make my life less stressful. I've finally admitted to myself that I am spreading myself too thin and trying to do too many things for too many people. Unfortunately, realization is not enough. Tying up the loose ends is oftentimes harder than the rest of the work.

Now, I am trying to wake up early (around 6:30am) and sleep early (around midnight) so that I can be more productive throughout my day. Unfortunately, burnout is a bitch. It sucks the life out of you. I know that if I was in solitary confinement for a week, I would have all the energy in the world. Life, as we all know, is not so flexible. First of all, I would have to commit a felony in a very sick and twisted way so that they would consider me insane. Who has time for all that? I guess my current strategy shall prevail.

The one thought that helps keep me going (except the thought of my beautiful and wonderful lady) is that, in theory, the more time I spend working, the more I should be able to finish. This has not held true yet. I have been turning down projects left and right (a rather counterintuitive way to conduct business) since January and still have a lot of work to catch up on. One project in particular is taking almost 200 hours more than I planned for. That's not so easy to schedule into an already tight calendar. But I shall continue on my honorable quest for a calm life.


Oh how I miss the comforting feeling of writing down my thoughts...