I've been trying to change my daily activities so that I am more productive and have more time to both produce information for people as well as increase my learning.
So I've added some tasks that will enable me to accomplish/learn more. But in order to do that I want to get rid of some not so time-efficient things that I do. But how do you make that decision?
It turned out to be pretty easy. I took a piece of paper and wrote down everything I did every day and added those things that I do but may not be every day (they were added at the end). This included things like meeting with classmates to do our required weekly work or zooming with friends.
Once I had even the tiniest thing listed, I went through each task and asked myself what purpose this "thing" served in my life at this time. I added that caveat because after July when Vol State is over I won't have to spend so much of my day walking and then I can add/subtract other tasks. It's a fluid process as needs and desires change as time goes on.
After going deep within and finding out the purpose of each thing (some I didn't have to go so deep with since they were things like playing solitaire on my phone or doing crosswords), I asked "can I discard this?".
If the answer was "yes, I can discard this" I crossed it off the list. Or I could have modified it. Some people spend all day on Social Media. They could say they will limit their time to 30 minutes or whatever works for them and still gives them additional time for other activities.
If there was a tough decision, I would write down the thing I was going to put in that place and look at the two of them and then ask "at this point in time which of these two activities would serve as the best use of my time right now?" It turned out not to be that hard when I compared them. I always went back to my "why" (to be discussed in another post) and asked myself how much each of the activities served my current "why" the most. That one won. The reason it was easy is that I knew this was not a "forever" situation - that 1) I could change it at any time and 2) When my "whys" change, this list will change - so it's not the end of the world to eliminate 'x' right now.
I revisit this list every week until I'm pretty sure I have it correct. Revisiting it also cements the purpose in my mind and that is key for accomplishing something you want.
