From being depressed and burnt out to Being Who I Want To Be - Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Being happy, balanced, and organized wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to be really productive, and being addicted to playing around with my smart phone didn’t really help me at that. Luckily, I found a really good solution for both becoming more productive and getting rid of my addiction. But before I reveal my revolutionary tricks, let me show you a method that helped me to gamify my life, and to do more meaningful work.

Daily Challenges

Well, the system I have implemented which was inspired by Getting Things Done was pretty good, but it still had some flaws. I thought that if just one outstanding book about productivity could already help me a lot, reading another outstanding book could boost my productivity even more. And I was right about that!

The 4-Hour Workweek

It was the fascinating lifestyle-design book The 4-Hour Workweek that helped me to increase my productivity. As the provocative title suggests, the book is about reducing the time you need to work by increasing productivity. Well, I was mostly interested about the productivity tricks, and less about the other aspects of the book, which are sure interesting, but not essential for my quest for productivity.

Focus On Effectiveness

One central message of the book was that there’s an important difference between being efficient and being effective. You can do all kinds of activities in an efficient way and quickly be done with them. For example, the GTD system tells you how to be efficient. But what if those activities are actually pretty unimportant? Are you effective at reaching your goals then? No!

Of course, you need to focus on that what is really important to you, but that’s easy to say and hard to do. Pure efficiency won’t help you, if you don’t do what’s really important. Doing the crucial steps that bring you closer to reaching your goals is what effectiveness means. Leave out the distractions and focus on that what you need to do to get further.

What really got my attention in the book was the idea that your goals have to be “unreaslistic” in order to be effective! Mediocre goals just aren’t motivating enough. So, I thought that giving me challenges that were almost impossible every day would be a great way to mobilize all power. And I was right about that!

Daily Challenges And Achievement Points

My system is very simple: Every evening I set a challenge for tomorrow on which I can focus. If I win the challenge, I get a lot of bonus achievement points (which I have mentioned in part 3). If I fail completely, I get no extra achievement points. And if I have partial success, I get some extra achievement points based on the degree of my success.

Results

I got some mixed results with that system. Whenever I felt that my daily challenge was exciting and worthwhile, I was very motivated to complete it, and mostly reaped complete success. On days where I didn’t take the daily challenge serious enough, I mostly failed. Anyway, my overall productivity increased noticeably, and the system made me feel really dedicated.

The major reason why I didn’t have more success is that I’ve quickly realized that this technique bears the danger of overexerting myself. So, while I set daily challenges for myself every day (except on those lazy days where I forgot to define one), I was careful not to work so hard that I would finally collapse. Because I needed to regenerate on some days, I’ve decided not to take the daily challenges too seriously on those days.

Mainly, the success of this methods depends on the degree of focus that is directed at the daily challenges. Even when using this system, it’s possible to lose focus after a while by getting too much distracted. And being addicted to playing around with my new mobile phone was very distracting, so I had to solve that problem somehow. About two months after I got the phone, I’ve got the right idea.

The Confinement Method

In fact, the trick that helped me to overcome my addiction was intended to increase my productivity. I wasted a lot of time, and wanted to become more productive. At first, I didn’t know how to do that, but then I’ve got the saving idea: Think about which trick increased my productivity the most in my entire life!

Remembering The Most Effective Method

So, I didn’t really come up with a completely new idea, but simply scanned my past for the one thing that made the biggest difference. Quickly, I have found the method that could boost my productivity the most. I remembered using a very intriguing method about one year ago. At that time my productivity was extremely high for a few days, but then I got sick. I interpreted that as a result from overexerting myself. But I had no proof for that, so I decided to give it another shot.

Confinement: Controlled Leisure

The right hack to boost my productivity was just to define fixed time intervals in which I was allowed to enjoy addictive activities that hadn’t any productive purpose. I could play games, toy around with my smart phone, or surf the web in those intervals, but outside of them I wasn’t allowed to do any of those activities.

I call that method confinement, because it confines unproductive activities in a clearly defined area of time. This method has two advantages: Firstly, it is a great way to enforce productivity. If unproductive activities aren’t allowed, getting some fun out of productive activities is the only reasonable alternative. And secondly, I could enjoy my unproductive activities more, because I didn’t have a guilty consciousness during the hours in which playing around was allowed.

The first days of that regime were pretty hard. I felt very tense most of the time, and had to fight my cravings with all my willpower. The very first time I applied that technique, one year ago, I succumbed to that stress, perhaps because I was just too hard to myself and only allowed 2 hours of leisure per day.

So, I thought that the first trial had failed because I just didn’t include enough free time. That’s why I tried the same method with 4 hours of leisure. Getting into that schedule was still pretty hard, but this time it was really sustainable. I could overcome my addiction quickly and my productivity reached new heights.

The Inverted Schedule

Afterwards I experimented with structuring my official leisure time. For example, I set up hours for reading, gaming, and chatting. That worked pretty well, and those activities felt much more intense and refreshing than ever. I call that method of structuring my spare time an inverted schedule, because work hours are not scheduled strictly, but spare time activities are.

I must note that this schedule was the same for every workday. One advantage of that scheme was that it was easier to remember what to do at which time. Another big advantage was that sticking to the schedule would become a rather strong habit. Activities done daily can be turned into habits much more easily than activities done weekly.

That system worked quite well. On one hand, I could focus on my work better. On the other hand, I had a guaranteed quota of enjoyable activities which I enjoyed, and which provided an adequate work-life-balance. The inverted schedule helped me to be productive, and to feel very fine.

After a while, the adherence to this schedule was easy and didn’t give rise to serious problems. So, I thought it would be a nice idea to use the system to schedule some really productive activities, too. Often that would work quite well. But of course it was easier to stick to the pure inverted schedule system I’ve tried before. Incorporating highly productive activities sometimes drained my energy too quickly. Sometimes, I just felt too tired for doing any serious work.

Anyway, using the schedule made me feel much more balanced. It filled up my batteries so effectively that my need for “time-wasting activities” declined after some weeks. So, I could replace very unproductive activities with activities that were more useful, for example reading good books. And I would still do very well with that system.

The Deregulation Experiment

Many weeks later, when I had holidays from university, I was curious to find out whether I would still do fine when I managed my time in a more flexible way that didn’t involve sticking to any kind of schedule. That deregulation experiment was a clear failure, as my productivity sunk drastically.

Unfortunately, it looked like I wasn’t able to work on a high level of effectiveness without having any kind of rigid time-management structure. That was a very important piece of information. I used it to start another experiment: What would happen if I doubled the number of hours I managed with my schedule?

Actually Working Time Management

What was the result of that experiment? Well, it was absolutely amazing! I quickly reached the highest degree of productivity I every experienced in my whole life! I hardly wasted any time on useless distractions, and I felt really great about what I was doing!

Finally, I have solved my problems with motivation, time-management, unproductiveness in an actually sustainable fashion! There was no real reason for being unhappy anymore. I felt really lucky. This success was one of the most important transformations in my whole life.

Previous Mistakes In My Time-Management

Actually, my method wasn’t really as simple as just doubling the number of hours I scheduled every day. I had to use a clever strategy, because in the past I often tried some kind of time-management system that didn’t turn out to be successful – at least in the long run. My main problem was to restrict myself far too much. By strangling my flexibility I cut myself off from my psychological energy source that was necessary to do any really productive work.

First of all, my biggest past mistake was to start with too many hours. And then adding even more hours after I wasn’t happy with the success I had already achieved. This could work well for a few days or even weeks, but not for much longer.

Secondly, there was also the problem that I hadn’t included any really effective breaks for my scheduled activities. Sticking to a schedule is always a test of your willpower, so if there’s no power left, then you will invariably do something else which is more fun.

And lastly, I didn’t allow rather unproductive, but fun activities in my past schedules. Whenever I made small concessions to my more playful side I did so too sparingly. Instead of allowing myself more freedom I would just blame myself for not being stronger and just sticking to my plans. It was like banging my head against a brick wall in the hope that my skull would somehow be or become stronger than the wall. Not exactly a clever strategy.

The Clever Schedule

Being aware of all those problems helped me to construct a rather clever schedule that worked amazingly well. It was based on several important principles:

1. Adherence to the schedule is rewarded in the form of additional achievement points. I got 1 achievement point for every thirty minutes in which I stuck to my timetable. Trying to reach new weekly achievement point highscores is really very motivating!
2. Every hour there’s an optional 15 minute break. Using that time for any kind of activity, be it productive or not, is not punished in any way. On the other hand, not making a break also isn’t rewarded by getting more achievement points for doing more work. Fiction writing would always count for 8 achievement points per hour, while all other productive activities were worth 4 achievement points for every hour, regardless whether I made a break or not. That principle puts some focus on maintaining a high level of concentration at all times in which I do some kind of scheduled activity.
3. I’ve broken down my activities into blocks of 2-4 hours. Between every block there are one or two free hours, which aren’t used for scheduled tasks. These hours can be used as additional breaks, for writing mails, going shopping, and so on. But often I need them to finish my daily challenges. What I use those free hours for largely depends on my level of energy. Free hours are necessary for staying flexible and sane.
4. The schedule is the same for every workweek. For the weekend I have a separate standard schedule, which I usually take much less seriously. Even though a constant daily schedule sounds like it would become boring soon, actually the opposite is the case! Because of the high regularity, it is much easier to experience positive continuity and flow. It’s also possible to immerse oneself much deeper into regular daily activities, because the memories of yesterday are much more easily retrieved than those from one week ago. The increased depth and continuity makes all kinds of of activities much more enjoyable.
5. When studying for university I made the rule that I’m not allowed to learn one subject for more than one hour at a stretch. That was a very effective means against frustration, boredom, and exhaustion. Sometimes I would even learn a subject only for half an hour, and use the other half for learning something else. That was enough to make slow, but steady and noticeable progress.
6. A very important requirement was to include really interesting activities throughout the day. For example I would learn mathematical subjects that I was very interested in, but which I didn’t really need at university. I’ve also included reading science fiction and personal development books into my schedule. Those aren’t the most directly productive activities, but I consider them as further education.

All these principles helped me to stay motivated, energized, balanced, and productive. In fact, I was more motivated, energized, balanced, and productive than ever in my entire life! This system roughly doubled my productivity – compared to times at which my productivity was already at an acceptable level. I had finally become who I want to be.

That’s it. That’s the one thing that moved me forward more than anything else: Just a clever form of time-management. It was quite a transformational experience to see it work out so well. The clever schedule was the key to the further developments in my life, which are the topic of part 5 of this series.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4