In the “Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity”, Marc Andreessen describes his no schedule theory as the most controversial part of his productivity strategy and when I first read the 2007 essay, I too was somewhat aghast at that idea. Indeed by the time I encountered his guide, around 2020, Marc himself had declared in an interview that his life had taken a 180 degree turn and due to the nature of the work in which he was now engaged he kept to a very strict schedule. Yet for several days now I have wholeheartedly embraced the strategy of not keeping any kind of schedule.
I hasten to add that it is only because of the way in which I had been conducting my life that the strategy appears desirable to me at the present time. It depends on your situation. Look at what you’re doing honestly and ask yourself if you are truly following any kind of schedule. In my case I had the evidence of many years worth of to-do lists that were never completed and plans which were never followed. Even at times when I was supposedly following an externally imposed schedule such as at school and university, my day-to-day activities tended to be erratic and irregular.
However I continued to believe that it was worthwhile at least to stick to those schedules which were of my own making. But in reality, I seemed to have no control over my actions and persistently failed to keep promises to myself.
It took a kind of leap of faith to say that since in practice I don’t follow a schedule let me make it official. At the very least it would mean that doing nothing would not constitute failure. On the other hand, akin to Marc’s Anti To-Do list idea, doing anything worthwhile would be a success.
I will not pretend that I am very satisfied or successful at the moment because there is a lot that I want to do but I still end up doing other things. For example, right now I am writing this essay at the expense of tasks that matter more to me. But the point is that such behaviour was already the norm except that it no longer constitutes a deviation.
For me the key takeaway so far has been that I feel less stressed and frustrated. I feel freer to focus on areas of my life like working out and tidying my surroundings. There are no competing priorities which used to lead me to neglect such tasks and it is certainly more pleasant to feel fit and to occupy an uncluttered environment. So in that sense it is a better strategy than anything I had been doing before.