Productivity After Hours

Mantras and Katas

One of the biggest challenges as a parent is to find the time to do what you love while also dedicating the necessary time to your kids and family. Children, especially very young ones, require plenty of attention. In my part, the easiest challenge in terms of time allocation is to have some form of structure before hand, so that when time becomes available, you have the capability to choose from a specific set of things to do.

Acting quickly is key on my part, since i suffer from states of analysis paralysis. I’ve been more or less dealing with this state of planification or at least 5 years so here i outline my current state for future references and for continual tinkering.

All this structured is heavily inspired by an article I read from twitter

Initial Process - Input of information

Compile information, ideas, reminders, TODOs and chores. The methods used to do this process are:

• Emails with the subject of memos on Gmail.
• Memos On Notes mobile App.
• Reminders on Reminder mobile App.
• Pen and Paper on my night stand.

** First thing I noticed is that aside from the physical notes, the electronic information should be unified in just one pattern.

** I must research a better way to compile this information in order to funnel all my information into one single app. IFTTT Comes to mind as an alternative ( Currently Researching).

Second Step - Organize the information

The data receive can have various plausible outcomes or events that must be used to establish which action proceeds, the lookup hierarchy is the following:

1. Can I do it quickly (Less than 5 minutes)? - If yes, do the task.
2. Does it have a due date? - Add a calendar event with various reminders prior to the date.
3. Is it for reference? - Add to Instapaper.
4. Is the idea to broad and/or does it require time to research? - schedule time to research or if time is full, add reminder to schedule task on a recursive pattern (always the week after current…to avoid overwhelming).
5. Is the idea passive (requires little to no mental effort) or active? - If the activity requires too much mental effort it must be consider appropriately in order to schedule time without putting too much mental burden (for example, doing it at late nights).
6. Is the idea clear but the effort required too massive? - Schedule time to start picking decompose the idea into smaller tasks.

Third Step - Review the Lists/Tasks

A time for the reviewal of the information that is to be done must be scheduled. Currently the following chores are recursively separated:

Final Step - Do the tasks using the allocated time

The step of making the task should be one used specifically for the thing that was scheduled for (if not, reschedule, if busy, simply throw a reminder back to reschedule). Avoid the trap of wondering in favor of other chores, since if those are necessary they must be thrown into the schedule.

All these patterns require frequent revisions practice and discipline since I usually just wonder around while getting entertained with any plausible thing. This post is an active reminder to not do that and keep the focus on the goal.