Any time that I forgot to perform an appraisal at the end of the day and write down what the schedule for the following day needed to look like, the next day always ended up being less productive than the former. This was one of the lessons which I had to learn in the early days. Because this system was not yet routine for me, when I woke up the next day, I’d constantly have to go back to the schedule I’d written down the previous night so that I could find out what I needed to be doing at that time of the day. Later in the day as I settled in to work on my own projects, I’d waste precious time, sometimes up to an hour, trying to figure out where I left off the previous day and what tasks I needed to get on with. At the time, I didn’t see anything wrong at all. I believed that I was keeping busy – cross-checking details of the schedule, figuring out what tasks to accomplish, etc. In retrospect, I realise that I was being busy but not necessarily being productive.

Another stumbling block for me was not knowing when to let go of a problem and revisit it later; and one year down the line, I still struggle with it. This often happens when trying to fix a bug in a computer program. I can easily spend thrice the scheduled time at my desk, poking and prodding and trying to resolve the issue. It quickly became clear that this attitude would seriously upset my schedule – starting with the fact that I would skip the scheduled retrospective for that day, followed by me going to bed at 2 am in the morning. This would create a domino effect that would make the next day even less productive. Having realised this, I started disciplining myself to keep a backlog where I could record any pertinent bugs and get back to them the next day.

I use this system to manage multiple projects and one weakness I’ve observed is how my mind often wanders off to think about one project while working on another. For example, I may have planned to add a certain feature to a mobile App but instead of concentrating on this task, I would find myself digging my brains for a solution on how to resolve a bug on the website I was working on the other day. It goes without saying, but I’ve had to actively discipline my mind to concentrate on the task at hand instead of letting it wander off.

One last point worth mentioning to help you concentrate is to put your phone on airplane mode. Most phone calls and text messages can probably wait a couple of hours and do not require an urgent response.

. . .

My Schedule

1. 6:30 am – 6:45 am. Rise and shine.
2. 6:45 am – 7:30 am. Shower and get dressed for work. House chores.
3. 7:30 am – 7:45 am. Breakfast. Social media. Pack lunch.
4. 7:45 am – 8:00 am. Drive to work.
5. 4:45 pm – 5:00 pm. Drive from work.
6. 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm. Recreation time.
7. 6:00 pm – 6:30 pm. Dinner time.
8. 6:30 pm – 10:00 pm. Personal project.
9. 10:30 pm – 10:40 pm. Daily appraisal.
10. 10:40 pm. Sleep tight.

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