mtcodex

Eschewing resolutions, this year I’m going for a regime! One that features targets, checklists, and best of all rewards! As I think about how much time I waist each day, a lot of it comes down to not doing small things. Small 15 minute tasks that could leave to a great deal of self improvement.

Some short things that I’d liked to concentrate on include handwriting, pure maths, design and typography, programming, blogging and reading. Okay, so that’s quite a long list of short things, but if I really wanted to then I could fit most of these into my day.

My solution to make the most of my time is two-fold. Firstly, implement a regime that makes it easier and more rewarding to fit in those small things. Secondly, to find a way to limit the time wasting. Lets look at the second one first.

Some things I’d like to spend less time on include reading blogs, surfing the web, playing games generally just killing time. Now there is nothing wrong with these things but surfing the web can quickly turn from looking something up to wasting an hour.

Each time I need to look something up, or want to read blogs, I’m either going to write it down and allocate it some time later, or I’m going to give myself 5 minutes on a count down timer. I love the app Minuteur, I now use it for all of my time keeping on projects and it’s great at that. I think it’s time to start using the countdown too.

Coming back to implementing a regime. I want one that’s fun to do, that makes tasks manageable and flexible and one that rewards me for sticking to it. First up I have to decide how much time to dedicate, how much time I want to say ‘this is self improvement time’. I settled on 2 hours per day (Yes, I waste a lot of time currently). Then it’s a matter of dividing it up into chunks and assigning tasks on my list amounts of time. Some things I may only do once or twice a week, some things I might do every day.

My time chunks that make up 2 hours are:
1 x 15 minutes
1 x 45 minutes
1 x 60 minutes

My tasks, with their minimum weekly repetitions are:
Handwriting practice. 15 minutes 4 x per week
Pure maths. 45 minutes. 2 x per week
Reading and practicing design or typography. 45 minutes. 2 x per week
Programming. 60 minutes, 2 x per week
Reading. 60 minutes, 2 x per week

That leaves me with one spare slot for each category, meaning I can take a day off or repeat anything as I wish. There’s also plenty of flexibility to change it by adding or removing things as the fancy takes me.

But what about rewards. My points are going to be hours. Each hour = 1 point. The way I’m going to do it, is that every 10 hours, is going to equal a guilt-free amazon voucher for £15. So if I make the most of improving myself over the course of a month, then I can spend £60 on books or whatever.