Tuesday, October 16, 2007
How to Unschedule your work and enjoy guilt-free play
LifeClever: "According to Neil Fiore and 30 years of research, procrastination isn’t the result of laziness. Rather, procrastination is a symptom, a way of coping with deep psychological self-criticism and fear. It’s because we’re taught to believe that working is good and playing is bad. To reverse this unhealthy model, Neil proposes a tool: the Unschedule."
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6 comments:
Anyone who knows me could tell you that I am always fiddling with my planner. I need to keep a schedule, keep track of my hectic lifestyle. However, I think there comes a point when you need to LIVE and be spontaneous. Why are people so obsessed with scheduling every aspect of their life? Do they not feel caged or trapped by time? I only keep track of the work that needs to nbe done simply to see where my free time is. When I schedule something for "free time," it suddenly loses the freedom it promises.
There were only two parts of this article I could really agree and connect with. Never ending on a tough note, and just keep starting. It is so true that if you at least start your break after finding something of a solution, you will have far less trouble starting it when you return. And it is by far harder not to mention more overwhelming to think about when something will end as opposed to how to keep starting it. I think that I would have a lot of trouble with this system. It would be hard for me to schedule or rather "unschedule" such vague tasks. I just don't know when I am going to have lunch every day, or what time I will get to sleep. And I just can't deal with a schedule that keeps needing to be changed. Seems it would be best for me just not to create it in the first place.
I also still don't really understand why it is an "unschedule". Maybe it is "unwork", but it is a schedule regardless.
i like what he says about how play time is a reward. i think i do this and most people do unconsciously. ill work on a project for a few hours with breaks every half hour for a snack, a pee, a phone call, an email check. it just takes you away from the material enough for you to come back to it with fresh eyes. and a lot of the time ill write notes to myself to read to get back into the topic after my snack break.
but i think that if i actually used the unscheduled system which he suggests it would make me nervous because it doesn't look like theres much room for work time.
Finally a schedule that makes the work seem less like work. I think the biggest thing about this article is that it touches on the note that we need to start first. We shouldn't think about finishing but it just makes us feel like we have not accomplished anything. By just starting we get the feeling that we have done a good job by just starting. I have a problem with thinking about just starting. I always make goals of when to finish. What ends up happening if I don't finish the project when I planned to I feel that I have failed and have not done anything. When in reality I have done work just that something I did not plan for came along. I think we all need to keep a schedule, but at the same time not feel bad when something is not meet.
Commenting here isn't on my unschedule, so I really feel bad for doing this, but here goes. So here is tonight's crew scheduel. 6:30- begin walk to shop. 6:45,-find measureing tape that fits my fancy, 7-look around and see how long till break, 8:15-begin preperations for break, this includes watching the clock. 8:30-break begins. 8:45-break ends/begin walk back to shop, 9-try to remember where I put that measuring tape, 9:45-begin to clean up, 10:25-start walk back to PTM to arrive when crew is over. So now you can see how little actual work time there is, and it doesn't seem that bad. This just seems like it solidifies the procrasination tactics that might be commonly used, never in crew though.
Just keep starting is something I really live by. It's becoming easier to budget my time because I have a better idea of how long it will take me. Often though I feel that I feel a lot less overwhelmed when I just start things so I can estimate a timeline. It really works out for me.
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