Just over a month ago, I wrote about how I had recently decided to stop following any kind of schedule on a daily basis. In this post I share some notes about my experience. The overview is necessarily largely subjective since consistent record-keeping such as would be needed for a more quantitative evaluation would be contrary to such a strategy.
Areas of improvement or otherwise
Fitness
Interestingly, for the one area where I have felt the most benefit, I realised that I do have evidence, accumulated by chance due to my use of an app for the purposes of the activity rather than for data collection.
In my initial thoughts about the no schedule policy, I observed that I was working out more and feeling fitter. Since just over a year ago I have been trying to use a simple workout app but struggling to stick to it. In the period between July 2023 and the end of June 2024, I had done under 30 workouts (most of them around 15-25 mins). Since the beginning of July up to the time of this post I have completed about 40 workouts.
On a qualitative note I find myself feeling fairly energised throughout the day and tend to get tired a lot less easily. I should also note that I did not endeavour to focus on working out nor make any kind of schedule to work out but I feel almost compelled to do so almost daily simply because it makes me feel good.
Stress, mood and motivation
A further benefit I had noted was an improvement to my stress levels. However there has been no noticeable effect upon my mood. That may in part be because I am still struggling to do things that I want.
On the other hand, I have been able to attain a better sense of what I enjoy doing. Over time I have ended up accumulating a large number of goals, which I’ve been unable to fulfil but also found difficult to drop. But the absence of a schedule, by not obliging me to work on anything unless I want, has allowed me to converge to fewer and perhaps more meaningful goals.
However an interesting result of this strategy has been its effect on my productivity when I have a low mood or feel unmotivated. At such times in the past I would feel frustrated at my inability to meet my goals and end up doing nothing. But since now any task counts as a success, I endeavour to watch out for and take advantage of even momentary improvements in my mood and motivation and thereby get at least some stuff done even on days when I think I don’t feel like doing anything.
Tidiness
Another area I had highlighted was that I had been able to keep my surroundings tidier. However I have been unable to maintain my initial near-zero clutter level. It might be because the strategy does not entirely remove the obstacles to tidying since my inclination to tidy is also affected by my mood which, as mentioned, has not improved noticeably.
Nevertheless I can visually verify that my surroundings are at an acceptable level of neatness most of the time compared to the earlier default state of mess.
Slow Productivity
I have been reading Cal Newport’s book Slow Productivity recently, in which he develops the following three principles
- Do fewer things
- Work at a natural pace
- Obsess over quality
What I find interesting is that I seem to have converged unconsciously towards somewhat similar ideas. For instance the strategy has led me quite unintentionally to reduce my goals and focus on higher-quality goals. Similarly before I began the book, I had been thinking that schedules did not work for me because they were imposing the wrong time scale on my activities and wondering how I could find a natural time scale for different tasks.
Yet such discoveries are likely to be a straightforward result of my strategy. Drawing upon the self-developed approaches of many real-life individuals in different eras, the book suggests that these ways of working may be natural to the human brain.
Newport’s intended audience is more likely to consist of those who are struggling with overwork rather finding it difficult to get anything done but while the deliberate approach suggested by the book differs from the unstructured nature of the strategy I have been adopting, both share the idea of simplification. No schedule is after all a simplified schedule taken to the extreme.
A couple of quotes from the book that resonated with me:
The benefits to working on a single project at a time are that
Real progress accrues whilst anxiety is subdued
(I noted that one of the key benefit for me was a reduction in stress and have been thereby enabled to progress at least on some fronts).
Doubling timeline for a task / slashing task load by half for a time period might seem to lead to you to do drastically less
But your original plans were never realistic or sustainable in the first place
(I abandoned a schedule altogether after realising that I was never following one).
Next steps
Whilst To-Do lists are still definitely out of the question, I have begun to try to maintain an Anti To-Do list (another idea from Marc Andreessen) namely to note down what I have done each day but without restrictions as to the form of the record, except to confine it to a single location, and with the understanding that it is not mandatory.
I would like more activities to get to the workout level where the results prompt me to do them consistently and skipping them becomes less desirable than making an effort. Ideally they should become second nature to me, by developing a strong mental association with reward. Then, perhaps, the initial mental barrier that still remains when getting started with most tasks, however enjoyable once begun, due perhaps to my mind’s struggle to distinguish beforehand between a pleasurable activity and waste of effort, will be more easily overcome.