Structuring My Time

During my time as a worker bee I understood the value of structure, both in helping a company get the long list of tasks it needs to clear done, and in providing you as an employee with a sufficiently motivating and satisfactory existence.

Ticking off a task we have planned to do releases dopamine as a reward - and in general I find that life goes on much better if you have a stream of tasks you are completing - resulting in a steady stream of satisfaction.

Like a puppy in training, this then encourages you to want to do the tasks more - and over time you can create a structure and pattern of behavior that you desire. Indeed completing those tasks becomes in itself addictive.

In my working days I used this power for evil - setting up structures where people would enjoy working through the tasks I wanted them to do - and making the workplace be somewhere they were generally happy enough to turn up to. I stole their soul and tied it down to the treadmill of productivity.

But while doing this you have to be careful - because while completing tasks can be a big boost, a long list of uncompleted tasks can be a mental drain, as they occupy a space in our consciousness. These future tasks must be kept separate, in some place that our brain knows will ensure that they are remembered, without there being any confusion over whether they need doing right away.

In the working would excessively long lists of things to do would break the spell and lose an employees interest in being productive - which was a dire and completely unacceptable scenario. 

But now it is a bit different, because now I get the chance to use these arts for good - ie by making myself happier and my life a bit more satisfying. 

So How is it Going?

Well as I do the first draft of this post it is going fairly well - I've sat down to do this activity as planned, and as an update the latter me has also turned up as planned to complete the second and final run through of this post.

But returning to the earlier version of me (doing the first draft of this post), it is 8:30 on a Sunday morning - and today I have got up done my stretches, weights, put away last nights dishes, emptied and reset the dehumidifier, had my daily tablet, put on the laundry and settled down to write this post. 

The latter me has also turned up and done much of the same tasks, except that on this later day there is no laundry task to do, and instead I have done the initial prep for some food which I will eat after completing this post.

Much of this is now a trained routine, and there are a few applications that I use to make this all go a lot more smoothly - and the point of the article here is to discuss these today. 

This ensures that what could be unproductive days, sat drinking lager in my vest in bed, turn into days where I can get stuff done.

I will add that when I say get stuff done, I really don't mean in the same 9-5 way I used to get things done. Things are more relaxed now - and it is now about putting in quality time, not about hitting 37.5 hours through the week. I probably only do 15 productive hours through an average week, but I would also say those 15 hours are used much more effectively. It is not a grind any more.

Indeed today I will do this article, have some food for breakfast, then I'll return to do an investment analysis - after which my day will be free for whatever takes my fancy - until I head out to play some football in the evening.

The goal here though, is not to promote my favorite apps or get any referral fees (I get nothing), but to answer the most common question I get about not working - do you not miss the structure of a working day?

And the answer is no - because I can create structure and I can replace everything that we think we like about work quite easily through structure and routine. If you can't create this structure you do need to learn - because otherwise you will likely end up working till you are seventy, simply because you will feel lost without the structure a work life provides. Then when you do retire at seventy it will be a sad and pitiful existence.

So let us now go through the tools I use to structure my days.

To Do

My absolute favorite app is also the simplest - and is the To Do app made by Microsoft. The value of this app is just how basic it is - and how much is delivers for very little interaction. It helps that it is free as well.

Today's To Do List

The core functionality of this app is that you create Tasks - which can have sub-tasks - which belong to a certain category. These can be one-off tasks or can be scheduled to repeat on a given schedule.

The task can exist without a date or time (and most of the tasks on here sit in this state as a list of things to be done eventually) - but the tasks that do have a date will work their way into 'My Day', as seen above. This is the only list I need to look at in terms of what I should clear on a given day and I can add tasks to the day if I realise they need doing.

DAILY TO DO LIST

Every morning this means that I wake up with a list of tasks waiting for me, and most of these are recurring tasks. Behind this I have that bank of tasks that need doing that I don't plan to do yet. With this daily list, what is key is that this is not an overwhelming list as that will start to introduce negativity.

So what does a typical day look like? Well, today I have the following list :

• Set of daily stretches
• Daily weights
• Daily tablet
• Two sets of dishes (midday and evening) - two tasks
• Weekly laundry task (every Sunday)
• Watering of plants needing a weekly water - it is a full watering task on the alternate week
• Write a draft of this article
• Water tomatoes in conservatory
• Cooking tasks

In terms of these daily tasks this is mostly about training good habits, using the dopamine hit that I get from ticking each task off. And over time things I want to be doing regularly have gone from being rarely done to being done as a regular routine.

They say that it takes 66 days for a routine task to become a habit, and what I am doing here is creating  system that ensures that I get through that initial difficult phase of establishing the habit - and then retain that habit long-term.

The good news is that it works, and by the end of the day it is rare that all my tasks aren't ticked off.

The one criticism I would have of this aspect of this app is that Overdue tasks are clearly highlighted in red in their sections, but there is no nice home for Overdue tasks, so on that occasion where I miss a daily recurring Task, you have to hunt it out to restore it. This can be frustrating.

FUTURE TASKS

The second core aspect of this app that I find helpful is it's ability to function as a repository for future tasks that I either want or need to complete. This moves any future things that need doing out of my brain and into some storage that allows me to forget about them as a task that needs doing.

Some of these are containers for the daily tasks that need completing, but others are more forward looking and some of the categories with this focus are as follows :

• Blog - a list of future planned articles for this blog with each assigned to a given Monday. This creates a schedule of posts I plan to write.
• Books - in this case this is a list of books I want to read that I can tick off as I get through them
• Cycling - a list of cycle rides I have done that I can add into my schedule as required - these I cancel instead of ticking off so that they don't disappear
• DIY - A list of DIY tasks I need to complete at some point
• Garden - Any tasks that I notice need doing in the garden (these get a date on creation if they need doing in the near future)
• Investments - A list of any potential investments that someone has flagged (usually on Twitter) that I will research at some point
• Series - Similar to books, but for TV series I am making my way through (it helps to know where you are at and what you are watching)
• Workmen - Any tasks where I need to organise a workman to come in and sort something

With these tasks, I will reiterate that the idea is not about getting through the tasks, but about taking things that need doing out of my mind and stored somewhere that they won't get forgotten. Some will seem daft, but even keeping what you are watching or plan to watch on TV in your head is an additional load that is best kept on a list somewhere.

This helps keep my mind clear - and if I feel unusually productive I can dip into this and schedule something that needs doing.

On the investments side this is part of a broader process where if I see a recommendation I photograph it, and then from there it gets transferred into the Investments To Do list. At some point I will get round to doing the analysis - and here it does not matter if there are many months before I get round to it - what matters is that this list is stored somewhere safe.

But as you can see, it is not all about being productive. In the example of books or cycle rides, this helps me do the things I want to do in a way that makes me enjoy those tasks more.

CONCLUSIONS

This is my favorite app for organising my time - mostly because I can very quickly create a task, and that is it. I now base my day around this app - and whilst that may sound restrictive it is not, because it is so easy to plan out what I want to do in a few seconds - ie "let's go do this cycle ride on Thursday, and we can get this more productive task done the day before".

Calendar

Another of the more used tools is a very obvious one - a calendar. 

Within this I have my more normal use of a calendar - to add tasks that I need to do in the future, and I predominantly use Informant for viewing as this allows me to bring multiple calendars together in an app that I personally find visually pleasing. This is a free app and I don't think I could ever justify paying for a calendar app.

My general use is as follows :

• Highlighting football games on TV (I used to subscribe to a calendar for this but now these have to added manually). This means I am aware of games I want to watch
• Formula 1 schedule - this is automatic and means I know when it is on TV
• Scheduling walks - when I schedule longer walks I add two hourly time splits so I know where I am through the day (ie walk to X Bridge, walk to Y town)
• Weather integration - I added a free weather feed from Meteomatics which gives me the weather on the calendar for the next 14 days
• Walks and cycle rides - these are added in green
• Sunset times through the year - useful when planning walks etc
• Food schedule

Most of these are fairly obvious uses, but the one that generally causes the most shock when explained is the food schedule. Here I have a two weekly cycle of meals that rotate through on repeat through both the To Do list and the Calendar (some of these food items alternate each fortnight with another task, which starts to turn this into a monthly schedule).

I appreciate this sounds overly prescriptive, but what I found was that by scheduling food like this I went from generally repeating the same meal every day and having a stressful time creating a shopping list, to having a nice structure where I know that a certain meal falls on a certain day. Over a two week rotation that in turn gets interrupted by life it never feels that repetitive. 

Over time I plan to add to this rotation new meals and extend the rotation beyond two weeks - but for that I need more reliable meals. This winter I will work on new recipes, while in summer I generally find I'm too busy to do this.

CONCLUSIONS

It is a calendar and ultimately a calendar is essential. I do find the extra information useful, but it is also key to avoid things getting too cluttered. Some of the more controversial aspects like a food schedule I find make life a million times easier once you get it right.

Structured

The next app is one that I have had a bit of a love-hate relationship with. The big negative of this app is that is can add too much structure to a day - and then you have the issue of setting a structure you do not actually follow.

My typical use of this app is as follows :

Structured app below the To Do app

What I have here is my typical way of using this app - and this is a usual sort of approach for a day where I'm generally being productive. I'm starting off the day by writing a draft of this post, then I will cook some food - then I can relax for a bit - before making my dinner and then I want to see the late afternoon football game.

The big negative of this app is that it can take time to create a schedule and it can become overly prescriptive. When I first got it I scheduled in a ton of DIY tasks that needed doing over the coming days, and then failed to hold the course after about a day.

These days I schedule things in lightly and have a better understanding of how I want to do thing. For days when I am using trains or doing a walk this app can be very useful - but there are also days when I totally ignore it because I don't want to be prescribed a schedule for my time.

My schedule on a day of planned walking

I'm starting to get the hang of it on this second time of using - and I'm finding that they key is to structure unstructured time. For instance in the above I have set aside time for TV and this is where I am still perhaps going a bit wrong.

I have been active in recent days and so I'm prescribing TV as a way to encourage myself to rest a bit, but instead it would be better to put in a slot saying 'Relax' or 'Unscheduled'.

For example today I have decided I'll do this post initially, then I'll have some food, then I'll do an investment analysis, after which I'll make lunch, do some tasks and then chill for the afternoon ahead of playing football in the evening. Having this structure is helpful to me, but there is no need to define a set of 'chill' activities. Instead the Structured app should resemble this rough plan for my day.

CONCLUSIONS

I previously used this app and then got rid of it as I got a bit tired of how prescriptive my use of it was - replacing it with To Do, which offered a way of having tasks to do, but with a much lighter impact.

Now I have it back as I find myself not having somewhere to put down a rough plan of a day that sits in my head, but use it as a secondary planning tool - and as noted above, I'm trying to fill it more with empty space. Now the goal is for most of my time to be unstructured and a smaller section of my time to be structured.

I still have a way to go to get my use of this app right, but this changed method of use is starting to work a lot better. I has clear value on the days where I find myself planning in my head "I'll do X at Y o'clock and Y and X o'clock", whilst the days when I don't want to get things done can remain creative and spontaneous.

This is actually the one app where I do pay for it, as I want the calendar integration. This is simply because it saves time - as I can add tasks to a calendar and then as if by magic they appear on Structured. This is just about not wasting my own time for the sake of a small amount of money.

Trello

I did use Trello originally and it is more in line with what I used at work - but whilst useful for planning a large project, I find this sort of tool fitted better to the world of work than to more free lifestyle. I no longer use Trello and have no plans to use it again.

Weather Apps

My final planning tool is rather obvious, but comes in the form of weather apps :

Next days weather and Windy app

For those who like the outdoors this is a pretty important part of your planning arsenal and it really does what it says on the tin.

Since I can get out whenever I want, I use the weather to schedule my outdoors tasks on the very best days (allowing for other commitments) - and then the near term view of rain and weather is pretty useful.

Overall Conclusions

This has felt like a slightly odd post to write - in writing it I do almost get the sense that I am a trying to turn my life into some sort of regimented factory production line - but in reality these apps have improved my quality of life.

In a life where you already have lots of structure, this level of detail is likely inappropriate - but in a life lived on a blank canvas, it is nice to have some sort of structure and planning to base things around. And  ultimately, it means I spend more time doing the things I want to be doing.