Productivity Phooey

I've recently written a post for SuperYesMore, the subject of my post and the project being productivity. I've been reading the other posts, and, wow, can Alex get impressive people writing for him and his projects. Impressively impressive.

I wrote up my process, how I stop the daily churn of tasks, while moving towards my long-term goals. The process works for me, I like it, I derive comfort from the process, I find it effective.

Yet, reading the other posts in the series, and wow, am I tempted to change things up. Sorta. I find some of the processes that others have, less effective for me. I've tried them and either dropped them because they weren't effective, or tossed them into a bag of poo and lit them all on fire. There are things that work for others and just do not work for me.

And that's okay.

These are personal productivity systems, they need to be personal.

One of the things I find consistently puzzling, however, is the insistence of scheduling the next day at the end of a day.

I don't do this. I stopped doing this years and years ago, before we had scientific evidence showing how dopamine and serotonin affects decision making. The effectiveness of morning planning over late afternoon / evening planning supports my viewpoint on this.

What triggered my switch from end-of-day to morning planning was the recognition that when I put out clothes the night before to streamline my morning, I so rarely as to be nearly never wore the clothes I chose. They were always strange choices. When I told myself to be brave and wear the clothes, everyone including teachers would comment on my choices. When the Russian says stop drinking, you stop drinking, or at least take note of how much you're drinking. If you're somewhat aware, you consider what's up.

Biology is what's up. We make horrible decisions at the end of the day. You've had the whole day to bask in the serotonin your body is making, you feel good (relatively speaking), and you're going to be as optimistic as your personality and optimism set-point allow you to be. Now why would you schedule anything the next day that involves estimating times for tasks? Sure, things like "commute" and "appointment" those are fixed times, and yes, schedule away on those, but for "finish programming feature B" and "analyze logs for trends of feature Y" those tasks you just aren't going to be able to estimate well. And for tasks that you need to do but haven't really committed to them? Oh, no, scheduling them the night before, high on the day's progress, what the hell, those tasks you don't really have to do are going to be horrible drudgery the next day.

I avoid all of those "what was I thinking when I scheduled this?" moments by planning in the morning.

I was feeling kinda meh about my morning planning after reading some of the SuperYesMore posts, all of these smart people planning their next days at the end of a day, knowing what they are going to get up and do the next day, wow, hooray, go them, and here I am planning my day in the morning what am I doing wrong?

"Exactly nothing," was the conclusion I came do.

While they might be planning the day before, there's no sense of their comfort in their processes, nor the effectiveness of their processes. I have no idea if they even like their processes, or are still struggling to find their groove. Maybe what they do works for them, that's fine. It doesn't work at all for me. So, I decline to change that part of my process.

When I realized I'm in the company of Benjamin Franklin on this when he "contrived the day's business" in the morning, well, yes, I was more than a little delighted.