I am already speaking to the choir with this post, but an evergreen problem for humans is a lack of hitting goals (or even having any). These can be anything from weight goals, professional goals, personal goals, relationship goals etc.
For this post I want to focus specifically on goals that require time invested, things are under your control. Things you can do today, that compound into tomorrow.
Life gets in the way
Laziness, drinking with friends, Netflix, video games, etc. Most of these activities prevent us from tackling our objectives. These activities are meant to be consumed easily. It is a perfect storm. It’s very easy to go socialize & or play video games with your friends instead of sitting down and hammering out an essay, a movie script, a new product idea.
The solution I’ve found that works better than anything I’ve ever done so far is tracking your time. Although for me personally, that hurts to hear & write, but it works very well & is an easy way to measure everything you do.
I’ll show you how I more than tripled my productivity towards my goals in a month using Google Sheets & the Pomodoro technique, and how you can literally do it right now yourself.
The Pomodoro technique
Insert the Pomorodo technique, the lifesaver. In the era of rampant ADHD, it’s very hard to sit down & focus. Many things are actively snatching your attention.
The Pomodoro gives you the chance to create your own attention. The reason this works (otherwise known as time boxing) is that you are essentially deciding to have a singular focus for the duration of it (in theory).
Instead of saying “I’ll write some code today” it becomes “I will write code for the next n mins”.
Pomofocus.io, my recent choice of Pomodoro technique apps.
This is generally followed by a 5 min break, which I ironically find useful to clear my head and refocus. This break period is also found to help you stay focused over longer study sessions or working sessions. I’ve found it helpful to sit & think over what I’m doing & concepts I’m learning.
Pomodoro + Sheets/Excel
Insert Google Sheets. With Google Sheets you can track how many Pomodoro’s you’ve had the chance to complete.
My November Pomodoro’s tracked…not too hot
I thought I had a great month of programming in November, but I’m sad to say that for the entire month of November I had only written a grand total of…..6 hours of code. It also felt like I had done a lot of work in November with my engineering goals, but the data shows the opposite.
Come December, armed with this knowledge, I more than doubled it my first week.
By the end of December I had done over 30 hours of code, more than 5x the month of November. January has already started off hotter for me. Take programming out of the equation. Use the sheet to track your reading goals, gym goals, nutritional goals. The important metric is to utilize sheets to track a unit of work completed. Whether that’s a completed gym session, Pomodoro focused on reading, or on a skill based endeavor like guitar.
How many times do we want to start a business but never work on it? Replace business with writing a book, working out, socializing etc. Make a time trackable unit for that & actually work on it a for a few hours a week.
I put a 1 on my sheets if I went to the gym that day.
(notice “Gym/Run”, a “focus on sleep” & “book” rows. I just put a 1 for activity completed or time spent on).
I actually thought tracking things sucked at first. It felt over the top & like a lot of work. Being candid, adjusting was a little annoying for the first week. But ironically it has made me a much more studious person. At first I had a hard time programming for 1 hour straight. Now it’s normal for me to knock out 3+ hours a day. Remember I work a full time sales job! I do not have all day to code!
The learning or goal hitting process feels fairly chaotic at least to me. It’s hard to sit & do hard things. But, the more deliberate practice you do, the more deliberate practice you can do. This is one place where the classic Marcus Aurelius quote plays out very accurately.
“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way”
I went from having a hard time writing code every day, to enthusiastically looking forward to doing it. It’s essentially gamified the learning process for me. It has become energizing to see that I have “beat” my high score from the previous week, month, day etc.
If you’ve had a hard time hitting your goals in the past, give time tracking a shot! Don’t overcomplicate it, notice how simple my google sheet is. Just track the essentials & move on.
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A few notes
I do want to add that if you do not want to take a break & keep going there is no reason you shouldn’t do that. The Pomodoro technique is just to help generate momentum in what you’re trying to accomplish.
A lot of people tell me the Pomodoro technique doesn’t work for them because they can’t get focused for 25 mins. Great! Don’t use it! Track your time some other way. The Pomodoro technique is just a mechanism to get the motor running. It is not necessary to study, it is just a tool in your tool deck. Or do 45 mins & 15 mins, or any other variation in the world. It doesn’t matter, it’s just to get momentum going.
The real key to this is tracking your time. I find it better to personally track how much deliberate practice I’ve done, and the Pomodoro technique just allows an easy unit of time to do that.
