Productivity in 2020

Life has changed drastically since March. Permanently working from home breaks the clean split between home space and work space, between personal time and productivity. I've never been great at establishing boundaries between the two, but now it's worse. For my own sanity, I need to find a solution.

I'm trying a new scheduling method. 10am to 6pm, I produce. I do my work. I write. I edit photos. I post to my site. I think deeper about the issues I face as a designer. I do not read anything online. Not blogs, nor Twitter. I want to bifurcate my day. Two halves, one for making and one for consuming.

If I happen to find myself with ten free minutes between meetings, I'm going to take a pause and sit in the space. No blogs, no Twitter, nor news reading. Ten minutes is not enough to time for good design work, but there are other things to do instead of catching up on news. Even just sitting quietly and doing nothing is better than filling my brain with non-design information. Boredom is ok. Boredom allows the mind to relax and to stretch.

It's stupid to even think that ten minutes of downtime is boredom.

I also need to push back against the desire to multi-task. Now that I'm no longer in conference rooms with my colleagues, I'm extremely prone to emailing/Slacking/designing when I should be listening. This leads to a low-level anxiety that builds up by the end of the day, exhausting me.

The dumb solution I have for this problem is to fiddle with my Fidget Cube. It really helps me concentrate when my hands have something to click, spin, or rotate. My attention is easily stolen, I can admit. If I can ward off a wandering mind with a little, clicky, cube of plastic, that's great.

This is all about intentionality. Mental health over productivity. Be in control over how I spend my day. It isn't good for me to allow my whims to dictate what I do. If I can be successful at these two plans, I believe I would be much happier.