This past week I’ve been tinkering with “ideally apportioning” my day into the following six main activity types:

• 4 hours of revenue generation (either client work or marketing my own products and services)
• 2 hours of revenue for tomorrow (developing my own products for sale)
• 2 hours of socializing / household work (helps me get out of my own head)
• 4 hours of exploring (self-assessment, writing, impromptu design and research)
• 4 hours of goofing off (cooking, eating, shopping, facebooking, playing games)
• 8 hours of sleep (anchoring the day by always being 10PM to 6AM)

I’d noticed recently that I experience swings of elation at getting stuff done, followed by anxiety that I have somehow neglected something else that is important. I also know I have a limited amount of energy and attention. I came up with this list of constraining factors:

• Thoughts that make me feel productive (good), stressed or anxious (bad, bad).
• Discovering the sources of these feelings, and noting what I can do to trigger/defang them.
• Acknowledgement that I need more alone time than I do social time (I’m an introvert. Sue me).
• Long-standing patterns in my behavior (For example, I am naturally curious about how things work. Can’t turn it off)
• Constant assessment of my mental “readiness” throughout the day (I’m highly reflective).
• Awareness of the differences between different types of “mental fuzziness”, and noting what seems to trigger them.

I spent the last week trying to achieve balance through the stack of hours. I also used this opportunity to re-institute some habits that I wanted to maintain, like getting up early. My hope was that I would be more focused and more productive without having to strain so much; by using a realistic model of my work day based on my existing proclivities, perhaps this would be possible.

Notes follow. This is quite a long post. (more…)