Don’t Piss Your Life Away

Many people have a tendency to be lazy. When they get home from work or school, they lounge around. Maybe they watch some TV, or surf the internet for a bit, cook some food, relax, watch more TV, think about going to sleep, surf the internet a bit more, then finally get ready for bed. If you work a 9 to 5 job, I would bet you waste six hours a day after you get home from work. That’s 30 hours a week. Thats almost another full time job.

I used to be just as guilty. I love being unproductive. The problem is, I HATE being unproductive. Nothing makes me feel worse about myself than pissing the day away on nothing. While I’ve discovered a number of techniques that help keep this laziness at bay (like Killing Yourself), by far the most effective for me has been time tracking. The term “time tracking” is sort of an all encompassing one. What has helped me so much isn’t strictly tracking my time, though that is part of it. It involves keep a journal of your goals, plans, etc. I do mine in a simple spreadsheet.

I start with a list of things I want to remind myself of every day. Then, I divided my day into three distinct parts: Startup, Production, and Shutdown. I try to update these as I accomplish things throughout the day. I find that the more often I look at it, the less time I tend to waste and the more I produce. In addition to these three sections, I often keep a more precise time log on the side, just to see where the most productive times of day seem to be. Sometimes, if I’m working on a lot of different things, these might be divided up into hourly or half-hourly chunks. Other times, there might be two or three hour chunks that are all devoted to one task. I make a special effort to note when I get distracted or lazy or off task.

The hourly tracking helped me discover that I’m usually super productive the two hours before lunch, but I don’t usually accomplish much right after lunch. This system seems to be working pretty well for me right now, but I’m constantly updating this. Below is the latest iteration:

In addition to this daily review, I have a weekly review that goes over how well I did that week and my goals for the next week. It’s very simple, but it helps keep me on track:

I discovered this system after stumbling across Sebastian Marshall’s site, and it has really changed my life. I’ve been exponentially more productive after using this. Not only does it keep you focused and organized on what you’re doing, if you waste a whole day, filling in the “what did I do to move me towards my goals today” and “what would I do differently today” questions makes you feel like shit. I literally added the “SPEND ONE HOUR ON A GOAL NO MATTER WHAT” reminder just a few days into this experiment. I felt so shitty recording a wasted day that I just implemented that rule on the spot. I’d literally rather spend an hour on something uncomfortable, but accomplish something, than have to write “today was a waste.” That alone has been transformational.

The easiest way to stop pissing your life away is to stop pissing your days away. The best way I’ve found to do that is to start setting goals and tracking time. Whether you do this on a spread sheet, a calendar, or some dedicated program, do it. This isn’t even low hanging fruit. This is fruit that’s already been picked, cleaned and prepared for you to eat. It takes almost no effort, costs nothing, and will absolutely produce massive results.