Forums » Smalltalk » Finally Have a Goal/Resolution Thing!

So if you've spent much time talking with me, or even just seen some of my posts in Let's Chat, you prolly know that I'm pretty much the queen of procrastination. There's always a lot of stuff I need to do, even more that I want to do to learn and grow personally, and I suck at actually getting any of it done.

I've tried declaring, "I will do this thing on this day!" Sometimes I'm able to stick to it, but there's no lasting change. I've tried determining set hours during which I will separate myself from others to work on things - but that never lasts for about a hundred different reasons (except in cases where it's going to work for someone at a place, anyway). I've tried using plugins that monitor my time on certain sites, but too often that results in me just staring off and doing nothing. I tend not to bother with goals because I usually either set them too loose to do any good, or don't consider/understand enough to be able to set something tight, but still reasonable.

But I'm gonna try another thing. I realize that the standards I'm setting for myself are pretty low, but it's meant to be a starting point for my lazy butt. The standard: I must spend at least 5 hours doing something productive every weekday.

By productive, I mean things like:

• Attending to paid work (this item will be altered if I get more regular hours)
• Making professional improvements (such as tech courses, updating my port site, etc)
• Doing laundry or other housecleaning tasks
• Finding more work
• Refining my accounting

I'm not forbidding myself from quick little fun breaks while doing these things, nor am I going to try to force it to be 5 consecutive hours at this point. If I don't do enough hours during the week, I'll have to make it up on the weekends. I'm going to try doing this like an adult (do it because it has to be done and the reward is better life), but if I have troubles, I'll start trying to use tools, rewards, punishments, etc. as a temporary push to help develop better habits.

I'm posting this here for two reasons. One, of course, is as a sort of "I'll probably be posting less" announcement. Bigger, though, is that I'm trying to tell plenty people to create more of a sense of accountability. (And yes - if at any point you catch me or suspect that I'm not keeping to it, you are more than welcome to remind me! ) And if you have any ideas for how I might better achieve this, please let me know!

Have you ever tried organizing a Do-It-Day with a friend or three? I find they're absolutely stellar for staying on task, especially when you have so many things you could/should be doing that it's making it hard to do anything.

That could provide guidance for trying to set something up with a friend who also has a great deal of trouble getting stuff done, but otherwise I suspect those Do It Days would actually only emphasize my troubles. I'm a terrible clock-watcher when I'm waiting for something to happen (be it at X time or just "in a bit"), and my productivity crashes. >.< I'll keep it in mind if I assemble some tasks that hourly check-ins should be good for, though. So thanks!

In the meantime, I just got set up on Toggl and nabbed the app to go with it. So that should help me track the time better.

Don't know if I've talked to you for a while, so first of all, hey

um, I actually have a huge procrastination problem too! I'm not entirely sure, but I really started to be bad last year and to be honest I never completely understood it. At some point I became worse and worse at just getting stuff DONE, especially when I didn't have courses to pull me back.

The thing is, I was really annoyed that I was falling behind, so I was very determined to change, and I believe I'm started to get better. This caught my attention because I want to share what I feel like helped me/ is hopefully helping me overcome this issue Obviously I'm not some get-everything-done superstar [yet] but I procrastinate much less. Oh, and just to note, though this is more of a personal thing, I try not to rely on apps and such to manage my time, so I mainly try to work on myself directly.

While procrastinating some times, I read articles online and watched videos that I came across, and kinda semi-hunted for motivation and tips to change my habits. Yeah, goals didn't really work for me either. But I think a lot of this lies in changing habits and assessing yourself. And using friends is a pretty good idea, by the way, especially since they can often help you assess yourself. So, it really helps to think about what you do when you're not working (especially at a certain time when you think you should be working) and why you do it. Or, if that's not a big problem, then what holds you back from working. For me, for example, I think it was a mixture of some sort of fear, forgetting what connected me to something I want to learn or a project I want to do, and not knowing where to start. And from there it shouldn't be too hard to figure out what to do about it and what to expect from yourself. For example, watching math videos help get back into it. I mean, they're videos.

From there, you just want to take your time to slowly adjust your habits. Deciding one day that you're gonna start goals list didn't work for me either, but getting into habits like ACTUALLY GETTING OUT OF BED when I wake up (and eating breakfast. I know!) and being ready to work seem to help more. I think the point is not to think too much before you do something that you know you need to do. Usually, just getting at it is best.

Well, go do the laundry