Solving the Motivation and Time Wasting Problem

I said I would post Friday night to analyze my progress and how well I did with accomplishing tasks. Technically I guess its Saturday morning now, but that fact that I followed through with this post means that I've moved forward.

I created the action item list on my marker board complete with the day and time each item should be accomplished. Sadly this was pretty much no help at all. I basically did the things I absolutely had to and just slacked off the rest of the time.

I logged every minute of my time for 24 hours. This was interesting to look at, but only helped me moderately in being more productive. I didn't want to write down that I played Madden for three hours, but I played anyway. It helped a little in the beginning just because I was conscious of what I was doing, but after a couple hours I quit caring.

The interesting thing is that the experiment should have been doomed to success from the beginning. This is because most of the action items just related to studying for a Biology test I had on Thursday. I normally can handle things like that because they default to a higher priority in my mind automatically (the same thing happens when people pay me to do things).

I didn't study as much as I wanted to/should have for the test, but once the test was over my stress level was reduced enough to do some other things. I did some minimal work for the veggiehub, but didn't finish or write an article like I planned. Another one of the action items was to create a power inverter clone site my Thursday night, but not yet purchasing the domain.

I was able to attempt this, but didn't actually create any content. I just put in a couple hours of research into topics I should create the sites about. It was time well spent because I think I'm going to try a more umbrella style domain and just have a bunch of micro sites that are clones of the PI site.

Although I wasn't supposed to be reading the internet/blogs I actually found several articles that were really helpful. I'm a regular follower of Adam McFarland's Blog and went back to review his posts about ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). Also I ran into the Corporatepreneur Blog and enjoyed reading the author's 'baby steps' philosophies and attempted to apply it to my immediate situation.

Although it will show you the extent of my slacking, I found this sweet image on deviant art that I absolutely fell in love with. A print of this might be my first purchase when I get my first post-graduate paycheck. I love the art style and the body language of the guy standing. I decided that he is exemplifying the ultimate feeling I want to have in life.

My closest attempt to define it is...supreme victory and ownership with a big dose of relaxation and a realization that he is in that exact moment.

I have some stuff to do this weekend, so I will review my productivity again during the beginning of next week. For the sake of holding myself to a deadline, I will do it Tuesday night.