I have been redesigning my workflow aimed towards gaining more focus. It’s been a while since I last reviewed my daily, weekly and monthly planning. I have a planning as this is important to maintain my energy over the long term.
As you might know I have braindamage which means I have limited cognitive energy. As does everyone else, mine just drops faster and is more unpredictable.
I can maintain energy in such a way I can more or less predict how good my energy levels will be in the next few days. I have a planning system where I track my energy and can see how I am doing.
It’s a pretty straight forward based points system, for example exercise adds one point, breakfast & morning tasks deduct one. And so on. I have done a few weeks of monitoring and taking notes when I was first in recovery, getting to know how much energy activities cost or how much they give energy, like a half hour power nap or a walk. All in all I can “spend” 28 to 30 points on any day, before the recovery takes to long to be able to “spend” the same amount the next day.
Exact science?
This is not an exact science, there are no guarantees I will be able to sustain this load when I follow my planning but the system gives me a fair chance it will. It’s all about probability really. If I just go hard, there is almost a 100 procent chance I will not be able to do much in the days after, if I follow the chances increase significantly, I have good streaks of several months.
The devil is in the detail, once I am experiencing such a good run I tend to get distracted and forget or ignore my planning, maybe not so much my planning, but the focus, as I recently found out when reviewing my planning after a period of rapid energy loss and bad recovery.
Problem of late, focus.
Once I am feeling good I will deviate from my planning, not so much in spending more hours but taking on more projects, ideas, interests. If I am less energetic I am able to focus on the things that matter the most. The most important project, the fun thing, the hard thing. Whatever it is.
If I have a period of more energy, I tend to lose the focus on the most important things, and start looking at other cool stuff to explore. Which in turn makes everything stall. And nothing, or almost nothing moves forward or gets done.
How do I keep my focus, and why do I lose it so easily?
Attention.
It’s all about directing my attention, which is all over the place on a good day. Which is fine. Your brain needs time to explore ideas and wander. In life goals, interests and priorities change as well. There is however a limit to where you can direct your energy, you can’t deliver your best work on all fronts all the time. You can’t learn to play the piano, learn a new language, build a house, exercise, and do the daily tasks at the some high level. At best, if you can even find the energy to do all of this. It will be mediocre or things take forever to finish.
Which is my problem, too many projects, tasks, activities. So the problem wasn’t the planning in itself. It was the lack of direction and selecting the things most important.
Aligning myself to the important things.
I needed to re-align myself with the things who I value the most. I like working on the most. I have older notes which show you can have a maximum of 3 main projects you can manage. Or activities you love to do is a better description as it doesn’t have to include your day job, but as it’s very convenient if you love your job, it’s nice if it fits. So your job is one, then you have your main interest. Let’s say learning how to play the piano. Or write a book, or rebuild your vintage motor cycle. These are all highly time consuming activities which require focus, consistency and effort.
That doesn’t mean they are fun all the time, it’s just the things you love to do.
So I needed to limit my “projects” again. Make sure they are the things I love to do, the things I really want to put energy and time into and make sure I do them consistently enough to move forward.
So there was no need to rebuild my planning, just select the projects and rethink the steps in these projects and align my activities towards these projects. When I am reading a book, the book should fall into one of the projects. When I have reserved a block of focused work, I am working on the selected projects. This sounds easy enough but if I don’t remind myself of the projects and goals, I tend to divert towards something else.
What has changed?
I didn’t change my planning, I did however added a daily moment of reminding myself of the projects I want to work on and not give myself any other option. And have a few notes in plain sight that remind me of the importance of these projects. Let’s see if it helps.
Another reminder.
If I have a period of higher energy levels it’s also important to not extend myself too much, I can do somewhat more, but I don’t want to overdo it. As it will inevitably lead toward a downward spiral. This is true for everyone. You can get consumed in projects and goals pretty fast, especially of they mean a lot to you personally and require a lot of time and effort. Remind yourself that rest & recovery is essential for being able to show up every day and have the highest chance of doing the work. It’s being consistent that is the most valuable in life, not sprinting a few weeks and than crashing. So be hard and kind to yourself, make sure you prioritize rest, recovery and downtime just as much as the work itself.
Enjoy the process, it might not be fun all the time, but the fun is also in the hard bits.