Thoughts

Hi, I don’t quite know how you found this perhaps you know me IRL or you just were going over random names as URLs, or you are one of the other Liam Lamont’s in the world & wondered about the domain name availablity. Regardless of how you got here hello, sorry for introducing you to my thoughts.

Lately, for the last few years really, I have been wanting to improve my life by altering my daily habits. I don’t really have big issues it’s just the little things could be better. Anyway the thought came across my mind that I should probably write out some weekly tests or experiments I can run & then analyse if they help or not.

Currently I have a spreadsheet which I track a lot of things in like habits (it has its own scripts etc., I have put too much time into it), it has allowed me to spot some trends in my behaviour. The primary trend of concern is that if I don’t plan my day I very rarely execute on what I need to do. So the simple test this week is just to write out an explicit plan for work each morning before I start.

It sounds simple but for some reason I don’t always do this, I think most of the time I just do one little thing first & then its 2 or 3 hours later and it seems silly to go back & plan a day you are already in the middle of. Maybe you do this as well, hopefully it is not just me :)

Plan

  • Write an explicit plan for each days work before I start
    • If I mess up & don’t do it at the start of my day I will right one when I realise, trying to stop the snowballing of a no plan day ASAP

Results

So far as of Thursday night results haven’t be spectacular. The primary reason is my own stupidity & inability to set clear tasks. One thing I did not clearly define was what a plan looks like. On somedays a task list worked on others it didn’t. I think one of the primary issues is forgetting I have these plans in place (even though they are sitting on a sticky note in right in front of me).

One thing that has been semi-successful is creating a weekly plan with the core things such as workouts, meal times, meetings, etc. I have by no means stuck to what that idealised week was but I think I have got a lot closer to it than if I did not have it. I am also forgetting about it like the task lists. In order to combat this forgetting I have switched it to be the first sheet in my tracking spreadsheet which is always open on any computer I am on. A simple big improvement possible is just to review that explicitly each morning before making the plan by writing out the tasks. Implicitly this will give me a better idea of how I can schedule and fit things in without it being actually scheduled.

I don’t know why I haven’t thought to connect these things before I even have a work weekly plan with the specific tasks that need to be done (facepalm). So in the spirit of better late then never. The process for coming up with a plan is to review the day planned in the weekly plan, look at the tasks that need to get done in the work tasks for the week & then write up the task list. Hopefully that will let my simple mind remember what it has to do each day.