Housework – Page 4 – Deborah Makarios

September 5, 2019

The Problem with Productivity

Why is it that strengths are so often also weaknesses (and, of course, vice versa)? Three days in to Spinning Plates, and its strengths and weaknesses are being revealed, with a great deal of overlap between the two.

One of its main strengths is that it seems to work even when I’m tired. Yesterday I was positively zombiesque, after a busy day the day before – aka ereyesterday or nudiustertian (I am not even making this up) – followed by a dramatic if somewhat sleep-deprived night involving blood, screaming and three speeding police cars, albeit all in separate incidents. (The police cars were together; the blood and screaming each came separately.)

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August 27, 2019

Grand Productivity Experiment: Conclusions

Time flies when you’re… experimenting on yourself.

It was nearly two and a half months ago that I wrote the introductory post of the Grand Productivity Experiment, resolving to Do Something about my general state of disorganization and unproductivity before it brought my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.

(A note to those who haven’t been following this from the beginning: the introductory post outlines the first method tested. The Phase One post reports back on that and outlines the second method. And so forth.)

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August 20, 2019

Grand Productivity Experiment: Phase Nine… Laid An Egg

Two eggs, if you want me to be precise. Two sessions of 25 minutes was all it took for me to realize that while the Pomodoro Technique works wonders for some, it was not for me. There are two reasons for this.

One is that if I am doing lots of small tasks, even batched together, my focus is popping about from place to place anyway. Trying to remember a specific set of things which I am supposed to be focussing on without losing that focus is just too much. Plus I tend to forget that I’ve set a timer and just womble off doing things.

The other problem is that if I am doing a big job, I like to get stuck in and do a big chunk of it. The absolute last thing I need is an alarm interrupting me every half hour telling me to stop working. Starting is always the hardest bit: why build extra starts into your work?

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