I went around and logged the things I happen to be doing in a spreadsheet for three weeks.
Assuming those are mostly the things I'll be doing going forward I've categorized them into action-cards. Those have groupings by space (home, out, job) and time (night, noon, morning).
One card is titled BURN. If you play that card you can do whatever for 25 minutes, but you can't play two in a row. I set a timer.
Then I have to choose a card to play, from the things I actually do.
Set a timer. When that's up choose a card again.
There is a card called SLEEP, it has a checklist. Similarly EAT/COOK has both instructions and time limits.
I ended up with more than 15 but less than 30 cards. And the single point of failure is in set-timer to choose card loop. This goes away after about 20 days where it becomes a habit.
There was another point of failure, but now there is a CALLS card that is limited to two times a day, and the phone is otherwise offline. Battery life is 5x.
At first I was like "but with those rules you could play BURN every other card, and that's not good" then I realized that if I'd only wasted half of an average waking day for the last couple decades, I'd probably be god-emperor of humanity.
This does seem quite a bit like the Pomodoro method. Was that an inspiration? Did you try it and it didn't work? If so, why do you think that is?
This is a really interesting technique! I'm happy this is working so well for you. Would make an interesting app though I suppose that would put you back on your phone.
godDLL|4 years ago
I went around and logged the things I happen to be doing in a spreadsheet for three weeks.
Assuming those are mostly the things I'll be doing going forward I've categorized them into action-cards. Those have groupings by space (home, out, job) and time (night, noon, morning).
One card is titled BURN. If you play that card you can do whatever for 25 minutes, but you can't play two in a row. I set a timer.
Then I have to choose a card to play, from the things I actually do.
Set a timer. When that's up choose a card again.
There is a card called SLEEP, it has a checklist. Similarly EAT/COOK has both instructions and time limits.
I ended up with more than 15 but less than 30 cards. And the single point of failure is in set-timer to choose card loop. This goes away after about 20 days where it becomes a habit.
There was another point of failure, but now there is a CALLS card that is limited to two times a day, and the phone is otherwise offline. Battery life is 5x.
Contentness is 1.0
Try it.
brimble|4 years ago
This does seem quite a bit like the Pomodoro method. Was that an inspiration? Did you try it and it didn't work? If so, why do you think that is?
serverlessmom|4 years ago
fizzbar|4 years ago