Today is June 5th. I just started a new job. We are jumping mid-stream into this productivity system so allow me a bit of time for backstory and an explanation of the evolution of the system. This system in particular is not the easiest to explain in words, and it is not beginner friendly, so, please do not take this as a recommendation to try out. Snapshots are to give you an inside look into how I do things and are not meant in any way to be a recommendation to others. It will be interesting to see as time goes on with these blog posts if the act of writing them down and giving advice to others causes me to use systems for myself that are more easily applied and beginner friendly.
The Backstory
When I started this system I was a contractor at Hulu. My previous system was good for getting me to make use of more of the time that I had available to me than the system before that had done but its biggest weakness was that it so strongly favored effort over accomplishment. I had tried to graft another system on top but that is a clear sign that the system will need changing soon. I used my graft and fleshed it out into a full system.
Initial iteration of current system
I divided my life into categories wherein I could be productive and make goals and that I wanted to improve my output with. I opened up Google Sheets and set each category to its own tab. The main focus of each sheet was to have an ordered to do list specific to that category of my life. The main mechanism was that when I completed an item everything below that item would get copied and pasted up to remove the gap created by the completed item. This system was going to be quantitative so I created a point distribution such that completing items at the top of the list were worth the most points and the points available decreased as you go down the list. Only the top 13 items in each list had point values.
I still wanted a lot of the flexibility available from the previous system. So I created 4 types of priority: Purple, Blue, Green, and Red. Each type had a different point distribution. For Purples, the top item in the list was worth 100 points. For Reds, the top item in the list was work 30 points. At the time I had 16 categories and I would draw their names to determine which type they would be for that day. Each day I had 3 Purples, 4 Blues, 4 Greens and 5 Reds.
My goal was 1600 points per day, which was rather challenging given the limit in the number of categories that I could actually make progress on at work. I tracked on an hour scale, only removing completed items each hour meaning that the next items in that category would only move up once an hour. The daily total was calculated and a percent of goal was given. It also contributed to the weekly total and percentage of goal. I then took the average of 4 weekly percentages to give me my average percentage.
In the carrot and stick equation I tend to motivate myself with the stick approach so depending on the average weekly percentage at the end of the week I would process the results with my accountability partner according to a system that we have set up.
This was working fine and then I got laid off from my job....
At that point I knew my system would have to adapt. The first thing I knew was that I was going to need to raise the point total requirements. I raised it to 2000 points. I could have pushed it further and likely should have in order to squeeze out more productivity, but since I had been laid off the previous year I had new insights into the impacts of unemployment. In order to not accelerate the impact of unemployment-triggered depression I gave myself a modest goal. I also added several categories for technical tasks of various sorts that I could do in order to give myself the training I needed in case it was a lengthy period of unemployment such that I could get myself back into being a developer.
This worked out fine. I raised my average percentage and actually touched some categories that I hadn't touched in a while. I was able to center myself and also push myself. It was pretty much dialed in to last for a while.
Then I got a job....
Today is only the 2nd day on the job. I had to make some decisions on how to adapt my already adapted system back for employment. I decided to go back to the 1600 daily goal but I also kept all the extra categories, at least for now. It is only a couple days in but it seems like it is going to be a bit challenging to maintain but I think I'm okay with that for the moment.
So, that's a lot of back story. Now let's look at the analysis.
Analysis
What is this system good for?
- Adaptable - When I'm unwell I can change the expected points for the day/week.
- Some Randomness - By having values change day to day I am encouraged to focus on fewer categories per day while not having that diminish the number of categories in general.
- Quantitative - When you measure things they improve, numbers are powerful because you can use math to get a sense of not just how the raw numbers change but also how the average changes.
- Confronts Unpleasantness - Tasks that are challenging or unpleasant drift towards the top and become more valuable. Since there are only 13 slots available for compensation at some point I have to do unpleasant things to open up more slots.
- Focuses on Completion - Task lists are better when they are discrete pieces of work. I've been weasel-ing a bit in order to make the chunks more equally sized on some of the harder to split up categories but those are the ones I wasn't touching before anyway. Like writing... I'm getting credit for every 15 min I work on this. In general though most of the categories are completion based tasks, like "Do the Dishes" or "Read 1 chapter of this Computer Science book"
What are this system's weaknesses?
- Too Labor Intensive - The time it takes to randomize the categories into colors, reset the color on the sheet tab, and paste the correct point distribution each day is onerous. Thinking back over the day and getting the values after getting home is onerus. This will likely be the downfall of this system.
- Software problems - Google Sheets is not great for my use case on my current computer and I don't have Excel. Not really sure why but sometimes loading time is ridiculous.
- A Bit Too Stressful - It is hard to pick a good point level that provides the right amount of stress. This may be a system that makes it too easy to beat up on myself.
- Doesn't Interface with Social Life Well - Most of my time I'm pretty solitary. This system works really well to motivate me to use my solitary time wisely. It can be challenging when there are other people involved. People eat a lot of time and any system that causes me to resent people is one I need to be cautious about. I do have one category called "Community" which works differently than all the other categories. It starts blank and I fill in names of people or networks I've engaged with. This offsets some but likely not enough.
- Untouched Categories - There are still categories I don't touch even when they are Purple. This system doesn't really reward me taking the time to meditate on why that is.
How long do I estimate this productivity system will last?
It is a bit too early to tell how it is going to work with my new job. I will be doing better with this job than my last one because I will be able to take care of my health needs increasingly over time. I think I can make it through the Summer. If I do make it through the summer I think that September and October will also go well. I imagine that one of three things will cause me to need a system change. I could decide the system is too labor intensive. I could decide that I need to focus more on my social relationships than this system supports. I could decide that my work-life balance has shifted too much towards work for this system to be reasonable.
What do I think the next system will need in order to balance myself?
Given the downsides to this system, I imagine the next system will be analog. Given the likelihood that work may shift to me focusing on that more I may need more joy in my life so perhaps a sticker system. It may be slimmed down as well. Categories that I haven't touched between now and then may get put further on the back burner until the spark of desire rises sufficiently.
Given this analysis I imagine the next system might be more beginner friendly for folks who want to join me. In the meantime I will be posting articles from time to time about topics general and specific related to productivity.
In the meantime if there were analysis questions you have that I didn't answer or you have a comment to make, feel free to comment below. You may see your analysis questions included in future snapshots!
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