Daily Entry: October 10th, 2019

Timeblock

Time (PDT) Plan Reality
0000 SLEEP
0030 SLEEP
0100 SLEEP
0130 SLEEP
0200 SLEEP
0230 SLEEP
0300 SLEEP
0330 SLEEP
0400 SLEEP
0430 SLEEP
0500 Morning routine
0530 Coffee and rumination Browsing: Internet
0600 Coffee and YouTube
0630 Pomodoro: Organization
0700 Pomodoro: Planning
0730 Wake up wife Getting ready
0800 Getting ready Walk to work
0830 Walk to work Stretching
0900 Stretching Hanging out with peers
0930 Start of work routine
1000 Pomodoro: Audit Exploration Pomdoro: OpsLead
1030 Pomodoro: Audit Exploration Slack
1100 Buffer Pomodoro: Audit Exploration
1130 Buffer Pomodoro: Audit Exploration
1200 Lunch
1230 NAP
1300 Meeting: Data Management Sync
1330 Buffer Pacing
1400 Pomodoro: Audit Exploration Pomodoro: 1/1 prep
1430 Pomodoro: 1/1 prep Ping pong
1500 Meeting: 1/1 with Alex Ping pong
1530 Buffer Pagerduty
1600 Walk home
1630 Buffer Walk home
1700 Cooking Hanging out
1730 Cooking Hanging out
1800 Hanging out
1830 Hanging out Movie: X-men Dark Phoenix
1900 Hanging out Movie: X-men Dark Phoenix
1930 Hanging out Movie: X-men Dark Phoenix
2000 Hanging out Movie: X-men Dark Phoenix
2030 Winding down
2100 SLEEP
2130 SLEEP
2200 SLEEP
2230 SLEEP
2300 SLEEP
2330 SLEEP

Thinking

I have updated my timeblock table. The way I interact with the table has evolved quite a bit since I first made the template some... 2 years 6 months ago? Something like that.

Basically, I used to think I'd make a plan and update the plan throughout the day, so I believed that multiple revisions would happen. But, that's not really how I operate, I plan ahead to get a good idea of how limited my time is in a day, and then I may negotiate the half-hour when I come to it, and also I may end up going off course. So all I really need is a "Plan" column and a "Reality" column. No multiple revisions to the plan. I may in my head have a revised plan, but it's not particularly valuable to write it down. Really, I'm playing off the original plan, and using that as a base of what's reasonable so I don't think I can do more than I can do.

For example, this week I'm opslead, and doing my usual amount of pomodoros isn't really in the cards. The plan helps me realize this. Me getting paged will interupt me, even at home, and so planning for a lot of pomodoros is actually planning for failure, in a sense.

I'm also starting off with all non-planned items up until the planning pomodoro to just be in the reality column. This makes it clearer when I started planning at a glance, and how much is backlogged. I also like having my initial morning "planned", because I'm working towards a consistency there, so that's my "plan" every morning.

Time to wake up the wife.