I Am Good Time Management and so Can You

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may have noticed that this is the second week in a row I've not posted on Friday. That is because the universe is a huge asshole and doesn't seem to like me posting blogs on Friday. So, I'm moving update day to SUNDAY. Starting today. Obviously. Thanks for understanding!

I've been working from home for about a year and a half now. In that time, I've learned a lot of things about myself. First and foremost, I absolutely cannot work from home. Home is where I sleep and play video games. I refuse to let work get in the way of those things, so I frequent coffee shops and libraries for work time.

Next, but no less important, is that my time management skills are utter crap. Garbage. No bueno. It's fuckin' embarrassing.

Call me an asshole, but I don't like working for a living. I don't like being told what to do and I don't like that whether or not I can eat food and live in a house is in the hands of some faceless entity who probably couldn't tell you my last name if you asked. The whole labor system is corrupt, anti-poor, and quickly becoming obsolete.

But I can't change the system any more than I can change the spin of our planet. So, I've devised ways to work within it, and in the process have become something of an expert on managing my time... in theory, anyway.

Here's a list of tricks and tools I use to make sure I can afford groceries and internet.

The Stephen Covey Time Management Matrix

You may have heard of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey's world-famous self-help book and darling of every high school guidance counselor and college-prep teacher since its publication in 2004. I've never read it cover-to-cover but I have researched it extensively it for work and, wouldn't you know it, there's some pretty good stuff in there. My bad, Ms. Ray.

The most effective thing I pulled from 7 Habits was a tool: The Time Management Matrix, something to which I was first introduced in college by this fantastic article. It's sort of like a next-level to-do list. Instead of using a bulleted list to plan your tasks, you sort them into one of four quadrants:

1. Important and Urgent
2. Important but not Urgent
3. Not Important but Urgent
4. Not Important and not Urgent

Since those categories are kind of a mouthful and not terribly informative or inspiring, I decided to rename them:

1. Do This
2. Develop This
3. Defer/Delegate This
4. Dude. THIS?

I slapped together this handy little graphic with some example tasks I might add:

Note: My life is extraordinarily boring.

(Here's a blank version, if you're into that:)

I picked green cuz I dyed my hair green recently!

Prioritizing your tasks this way will teach you far more about what matters to you than a bulleted list ever could. The Covey Matrix is two parts to-do list to one part mindfulness exercise. In my opinion, quadrants two and three are the most important: The former keeps your long-term goals at the forefront of your attention. The latter teaches you how to say no and to ask for help, which are truly two of the most useful skills a human being can have and easily my greatest weaknesses. 

I love the Covey Matrix so much I went full toddler and drew one in chalk on my bedroom wall, right in front of my desk. I use sticky notes to sort tasks when I'm working at home. If I'm on the go, I'll scribble one out in a notebook and use that. If you use a to-do app, you might even try remodeling your task categories by priority instead of category.

Speaking of to-do apps...

Any.Do

Because of my interests, my job, and just who I am as a person, I spend an enormous chunk of my time screwing around with Android apps. I love them. Some people get drunk and buy things on Amazon. I get drunk and either download apps from the Google Play store or put books on hold at the library. Both activities are great fun and (usually) don't cost a cent. 

I'm an especially big fan of productivity apps. I firmly believe in making my shitty existence better and easier by any means necessary, including and especially with the use of technology. My cognitive capabilities are limited and only ever going to get worse: why wouldn't I do everything in my power to lessen my mental burdens and free up brainpower for shit I'd rather be doing, like taking depression naps? Why would I do a job that my smartphone could do better and with less effort? That's not being lazy; that's being efficient. And also in my case lazy. Either way, I eagerly await and welcome our oncoming robot overlords.

I've played with a lot of task management apps over the years. But the one I always keep coming back to, and the one I'm using right now, is Any.Do.

I first found Any.Do early in my undergrad career. I was still mourning the recent loss of Astrid, the task manager I'd been using before. Yahoo had just bought it that year, only to ruthlessly kill it months later (and on my BIRTHDAY, no less). At the time, I was going through task managers like bad Tinder dates and cheap toilet paper, despondent and grieving but hoping I'd find something to fill the void Astrid left behind. 

Any.Do has unquestionably filled that void. Even back then, it boasted a number of useful features and I found its minimalist aesthetic, responsive interface, and (admittedly terrible at the time) desktop compatibility most enticing. 

What has really won me over, however, is Any.Do's willingness to change, experiment, and improve. It seems like every time I find myself wishing Any.Do had this or that feature, I end up getting my wish before I even have time to properly complain about it. I wanted a web app instead of a shitty Chrome extension: Turned out they'd been working on it for months. I wanted tags: They added tags (but only for premium, boo). There's even a feature in development that will let you outsource your tasks to actual people assistants (for a fee). How cool is that?! 

I use the free version and am very happy with it. If I wasn't such a broke and cheap bastard, however, I'd have the premium version, if only for the location-based reminders feature and tags. If you want to start using Any.Do, here's a neato referral link from me, which will give us both a week of Premium features when you sign up. 

Any.Do also has a sister app, Cal, but I don't get it and I don't use it. I prefer...

Google Calendar

Listen. If I don't have regular reminders to go places and do things, I will neither go places nor do things. In this way, a written planner is completely useless to me. A notebook will not remind me that I have to be at the doctor in 20 minutes and it takes 18 minutes to get there and if I'm late it'll take 2 months to reschedule so I really should leave right now. 

But Google will do that. Google will do all that and so much more. 

The whole Google Suite is rife with useful tools that can make you a more productive and happier person but Calendar is what I get the most mileage out of on a day-to-day basis. Not only can you input your appointments, you can set reminders to yourself, including location-based reminders (take THAT, Any.Do!), and there's even a very basic tasks function if you'd rather use that than Any.Do... though I'd think you pretty silly for preferring it. It integrates with Google Maps, so you can set the locations of your appointments and get estimations of how long it'll take to get to your destinations. And you can invite other people to your Calendar events, which is hugely handy when you work remotely with people in different time zones.

Plus, if you have access to the Google Voice Assistant, the command "start my day" will list your day's calendar appointments, read out your reminders, and tell you all sorts of other neato information about your upcoming day. I use it to get the news and weather, too. It's almost like having a personal assistant, but like, a cheap knock-off personal assistant. 

Google Calendar is powerful enough on its own but Google becomes more powerful the more of its apps you use. Because my job is done through the Google Suite, I use a lot of Google's parts, and it works wonderfully for me. But I'll confess: I think Outlook is just as nice. My university used Outlook as its email platform and the only part of it I hated was how incompatible it was with Google. As a standalone platform within the Microsoft family, however, I think it's great. And as much as I hate Microsoft sometimes, I do love the Office Suite.

Oops, I got a little distracted there. That happens a lot, actually. That's why I also use...

App Blockers

Because my work computer is also my Overwatch-playing computer, and my work phone is also my Twitter and book-reading phone, some days I have a hell of a time buckling down and doing the things I get paid to do because I'd much rather be doing the things I actually enjoy doing. For times like these, I invoke the power of app and website blockers.

My two favorites are Stayfocusd for web and OFFTIME for Android. Both are designed to block your access to different websites and apps for time periods you determine. With Stayfocusd, you can set a time limit to use the websites you want to be blocked, and they'll only be blocked when your time runs out for the day. Stayfocusd also has what it calls the Nuclear Option, which blocks either your blacklist or all websites for a set period of time.

OFFTIME is basically just the nuclear option of Stayfocusd. You set the apps you want to be blocked and the amount of time you want to block them, activate the timer, and set your phone down to go live your actual, real life. OFFTIME will even block calls and texts, but you can whitelist certain contacts or have a call come through if someone tries to contact you more than once in a short period of time, so you don't miss emergencies. That would be bad.

If you want something more like Stayfocusd for your phone, though, I used to use AppDetox and think it's also great. Switching to OFFTIME was purely a matter of personal preference. I love them both equally.

I'm starting to feel like that guy in every Pokemon game. Wow! Technology is amazing! I wonder what the next high-tech suggestion is going to be...

A Notebook

Surprise! It's actually something not high-tech at all. In fact, my current notebook of choice is something I snagged from the dollar store because it had a cool pattern on the cover. 

You can just make out my Covey Matrix on the wall in the background.

I've mentioned that I'm profoundly stupid and have a garbage memory, so I rely on technology to supplement my limited brainpower. However, there are some things that are just easier for me to jot down on paper. Maybe it's a side-effect of my old-school upbringing or being born pre-internet. Maybe there's a scientific explanation. I don't know and I don't really care. I like writing things down sometimes.

My notebook serves two purposes. The first is to write down tasks I have to get done, which I usually transfer to Any.Do once I've sorted them out on paper. The second and far more important/useful thing I do with my notebook is to keep a distraction log.

I shamelessly ripped the idea of a distraction log off one of Fabulous's in-app journeys called Staying on the Road, which is all about increasing your focus. The idea is simple: As you're doing your work, every time you find yourself distracted by a thought or idea, you write it down in your distraction log and get back to work. This allows you to acknowledge the thought without having to actively engage in it and throw yourself off-track from what you're actually supposed to be doing. You're not dismissing those thoughts; just deferring them. And as we learned a couple paragraphs ago, being able to defer and delegate ideas is a habit of a highly effective person. 

Prioritization is just efficient procrastination. I'm a gold medalist procrastinator, so the distraction log fit right into my lifestyle. I don't have ADHD or any attention disorders (that I know of, fuck) but based on what I know about them, I think a distraction log would be useful for those who suffer from attention-based disorders. It sure as hell helps with my anxiety.

Final Thoughts

In the interest of being honest, I'm still pretty miserable at managing my time wisely. My energy levels come and go in waves. Some days, I can blow through everything I need to do with no trouble or need for guidance. Other days I need a ten-step YouTube walkthrough just to scratch my own ass. But of all the tricks and tools I've used throughout college, freelancing, and being an emotional disaster of a human being, these are what have consistently helped me the most.

That's it for me. See you next week. Be good. Make art.

How about you? What are your time management secrets? Share them in the comments or tell me on Twitter.

How to Get Over Blank Page Syndrome and Just Fucking Write

Confession time: I don’t really have a set writing routine. A lot of professional writers will clutch their pearls upon hearing this. They’ll cry sacrilege. “You have to write every day!” They weep, “Or you’ll lose your magic writing powers forever!”

Yeah. That’s a lie.

If you needed to hear that it’s okay for you to not kill yourself trying to put words on pages every day of your natural life, consider this that moment. Everyone’s different. Your needs are different from Margaret Atwood’s are different from mine. Do what works for you.

That said, any writer worth their weight in salt knows that you do have to write at least semi-regularly, the same way you’d have to practice any skill at least semi-regularly to get better at it. But sure as God’s got sandals, there will always be obstacles that keep writers from doing the writing thing. Today we’re going to talk about one particularly nefarious issue: Blank Page Syndrome.

Even if you’ve never heard the term before, you probably know what it means and how it feels. There’s really nothing comparable to the fear and dread that can bubble up inside you every time you open a blank page or document and find yourself utterly devoid of words to put upon it.

Writers of all backgrounds and levels of experience hit this roadblock at least once in their lives. Hell, I even felt it a little bit writing this post. But it can be conquered. You can make that blank page your bitch. All you need is a set of tools to help you when Blank Page Syndrome strikes.

Give Yourself a Laughably Easy Bare Minimum

I know I just spent a couple paragraphs telling you not to sweat it if you don’t write every day but I really can’t understate the virtues of… well, writing every day. It’s just a matter of math; the more time and effort you put into a skill, the better you’re going to get. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. That’s just how it is.

But I also understand that putting words on a page every day can be daunting at best and face-tearingly horrendous at worst. Believe me when I say I empathize. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t even be writing this. I’d be taking a nap I neither need nor deserve.

So, instead of self-flagellating every time you fail to meet your goal, why not reevaluate your goal? Why not move the goal post a little closer until you’re consistently meeting those marks?

If you can’t write 1,000 words a day, why not write 500 words a day? Or, if you’re like me and have energy levels as consistent as Bitcoin prices, why not aim for a certain number of words per week?

Still too much? What about one paragraph a day? What about one sentence a day? Keep going lower and lower until you find a bar you can hit. Then, start there.

Even if a sentence a day doesn’t feel like much, those sentences will add up. Anyone who’s participated in National Novel Writing Month knows that it only takes 1,667 words a day to add up to a 50,000-word novel in one month. Small steps matter.

Don’t Get it Right, Get it Written

I have a Bachelor of Arts in Professional and Technical Writing. While I was in school acquiring this very useful degree that was totally worth the $53,000 of student loan debt I racked up in the process, much to my amazement, I learned a lot about writing. Sometimes, people with more knowledge and experience than you can actually offer useful insights on how to make you better. Who knew?

One of the things I heard over and over again was not to edit as you’re writing. Editing as you go was believed to be one of the cardinal sins of professional writing. Thou Shalt Not Edit While Drafting, my professors would wail every time they caught any of us meager ingrates so much as reaching for the Backspace key.

My blog is still fairly young, so allow me to tell you something important about me: I do not like being told what to do. I am stubborn and spiteful and I’ll probably die the stubborn and spiteful old curmudgeon I’ve been since conception. I like to be the rebel. I walk the unbeaten path. I see things a little differently.

Another thing you need to know about me is that I am a chronic edit-as-I-writer. I can’t help myself. I just really prefer editing to writing and even typing 90-100 words per minute I can't keep up with the shitty carnival sideshow of random thoughts constantly playing out inside my head.

I used to dismiss the constant warnings from my writing professors that I was just wasting time. "Editing is for later!" They'd tell me. "Don't get it right, get it written!"

Bah, I said. What's the point? Maybe it would matter if I had a separate person as an editor, but I have to do both jobs myself. Why not do them simultaneously?

To a certain degree, I still believe this. I don't think there's anything wrong with indulging the occasional editing tangent when you're writing if the spirit moves you a certain way. HOWEVER, time and experience have also shown me that a limit is necessary. The need to create perfect content on the first try can paralyze a writer, as it has paralyzed me time and time again, but your first try is not supposed to be perfect. Your first draft is your sketch. You might clean up a few lines here and there but ultimately you’re not going to be able to refine it to perfection until you have a basic layout to work with first. So quit putting that kind of pressure on yourself. It’s dumb and it doesn’t serve you.

By the end of my (first) senior year, that adage I'd once rolled my eyes at became a mantra I still chant to this day: Don't get it right. Get it written. If you find yourself worried that you’re not going to get it perfect on the first try, then congratulations. You are just like every other writer that exists.

Start at the Beginning… or Anywhere Else

I’ve recently taken up fanfiction writing as a hobby. It’s a nice way to flex my fiction muscles without having to come up with like, actual original characters and ideas. It’s also a good way to get me writing more often than I normally would. It’s also also a good way to get noticed by people on the internet, which is going to be convenient and splendid when I finally work up the muster to write my own stuff.

Here’s a screenshot from a fic I’ve been working on, on and off (mostly off these days), for about a month now:

For the record, YES, it IS Ace Attorney fanfiction.

As I’m sure you can tell, I did not write a beginning. Why? Because I couldn’t think of one.

Writing doesn’t have to start at the beginning of the story. If you find yourself stuck on a beginning, jump to a part where you’re not stuck. Writing an academic paper and can’t think of an introduction? Don’t write the introduction; start with the body. It might sound crazy, but think about it like this: How can you introduce a paper that doesn’t even exist yet?

There is no shame in jumping around to different parts of your project. Most movies aren’t shot chronologically; shooting schedules are often based on what locations, people, and props are available at the time, or by order of priority. Why shouldn’t writing be the same way?

This includes skipping the little things, too. Look back at my example photo; you’ll see there’s another double-bracketed placeholder reminding me to double-check the crimes Manfred von Karma committed because I couldn’t remember them all at the time I was writing. That’s allowed. You’re allowed to skip things you don’t know or can’t remember and come back to them later.

Of course, it’s easy to forget that you skipped a part of your project, so be sure to leave yourself an obvious placeholder to go back to when you’re ready. You can leave any kind of placeholder you like, but if you don’t want to think that hard, use the letters [TK], with or without brackets. Why? These two letters rarely show up next to each other in English words. It makes finding them with Ctrl+F waaaay easier down the road.

Just Fucking Write

Stephen King said it best: Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work. Sometimes there is no life hack or sick trick to help you jump that hurdle between a blank page and a page with words on it.

So, the next time you find yourself suffering Blank Page Syndrome, just start writing. Write anything. It doesn’t even have to be relevant to the project you’re working on. Hell, write about how obnoxious this advice is or how much you hate this stupid project you have to do. Write your favorite fudge recipe from memory. I don’t care. You shouldn’t either. It’s not about the quality of the content right now. It’s about proving you have the power to string together words into some kind of intelligible order.

Blank Page Syndrome and all other forms of writer’s block are 90% a mind game. It’s not like your brain suddenly unplugged itself. You have the power to write inside you, no matter how mentally constipated you feel. So do it. Do it terribly if you have to. In fact, I encourage it. Write some absolute garbage, have a good laugh about it, and then get back on the horse.

When the founder of PaperDemon.com, BogusRed, was in art school, she had a professor who said something to the effect that every artist has about 10,000 really shitty drawings inside of them. Like, no matter what you do with them, those 10,000 drawings are just going to be the worst things you’ve ever created. But once those 10,000 are out of your system, you’re golden.

The idea is this: Sometimes, you’re just going to produce shit. Everyone does. Including and especially myself. This blog ain’t exactly Shakespeare. That’s perfectly okay. Don’t let it matter. If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs.

If you’re really, truly stumped and struggling, then take a break. Get up. Walk away. Get a drink. Give yourself at least five minutes. Then come back and try again.

Don’t let your brain play games with you. Make that blank page your bitch. It’s just a sheet of paper or some glowing lights on a screen. It can’t hurt you.

And, if all else fails, just remember that the Fifty Shades of Grey books were formed from Twilight fanfiction, not professionally edited, and still became a bestseller with a movie deal. Shitty writing gets published every day and great writing gets ignored every day. The whole publishing industry is subjective and meaningless. So just write, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t have to be good. You wrote it and no one else did. That’s good enough.

See you next week. Be good. Make art.

Have a suggestion or request for next week’s topic? Hit me up on Twitter or leave a comment below!