Manifesto-ish

Inspired by nerimon/Alex, I have decided that my life needs to be more productive. In his last few blogs, Alex has been talking about purging his life and gearing his actions towards outcomes. He has deleted many of his subscriptions on YouTube (down to 8 I believe!), got rid of the RSS feeds he doesn't care about on Google reader, deleted his facebook and twitter accounts and that's just the online stuff!

I have decided to take his lead. I have been kind of trying to do this kind of thing all year, but I keep starting and stopping. So lets see if this sticks...

To keep myself on track I have written down a few short goals that I want to shape my day to day life with.

• Job and Financial Security - at the moment this means job seeking and working on the budget.
• Peace and Comfort - right now this means DECLUTTERING and CLEANING, although this could also mean meditating or showering etc.
• Creativity and Personal Expression - this is one I have been neglecting quite a bit. I want to start writing creatively and drawing, but it also counts as blogging because that's personal expression, often in its most literal form...
• Knowledge - I want to try and read at least one article a day. Or research something ... Or look into Universities and their PhD programs. I can't forget that this is the direction that I want my life to head. If I could combine this with the first point, and get a job in the area ... even better! Birds with stones and all that.

I've also written this in big letters "SPEND 80% of YOUR TIME WORKING TOWARDS THESE GOALS!" because Alex pointed out that usually 80% of our outcomes are achieved during 20% of our day. I want to turn that around so that I am productive not just for 20%. Also if only 20% of my day yields results, and often I am not doing anything at all productive during most of the day, then those 80% results we are talking about are not that significant. However if I spend more time doing things that are geared towards my goals, then I can change that. The results will be greater.

Then I've just got a little list of goals/ideas that fit under the headings so that I don't spend precious time trying to figure out what to do... because that will inevitably lead me to spend hours in front of World of Warcraft or playing Bejeweled on facebook.

Oh and no, I can't bring myself to delete facebook although it would be an excellent idea to cut down on the number of times I check the damn thing. Perhaps by limiting it to maybe 3 a day? Then down to 2? Who knows maybe one day I will spend a whole day without needing to check it (and not one of those days when it is infeasible to check it... a day at home so no cheating!). But I'm not there yet.

So there it is. My new productivity plan.

I realise that I frequently (ish) blog about my goals and my plans and how I need to get into gear. But that is because I am very good at not following through. I have fabulous intentions but then get waylaid. I find more fun things to do etc. But what I need to realise is that when I look back at this year I don't want to be ashamed of all the time I could have spent doing other things!

Its not like I am going to quit doing fun stuff all together. I have a vague idea that if I spend at least 4-6 hours a day in this mode I'll be on the right track and then I can veg out, or go for a walk or something. Plus, a few of the things on my list are actually things that I enjoy doing, and wouldn't feel like that much of a strain so that will help.

But now the test - how long will it take me to get waylaid? And will I use the fact that I got waylaid to give up altogether? Hm... We shall see!

Wish me luck!