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It’s an old-school paper-planner system that requires a little micromanaging, but the payoff is worth it.
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| Photo: Nick David/Getty Images |
A few years ago, I assigned Ben Franklin’s Autobiography as
reading for the literature survey class I was teaching — and, well, to
say my students didn’t relate very well might be putting it mildly.
Among other things, Franklin’s memoir devotes a fair amount of space to
explaining his daily strategy for maximum productivity, which includes a
5 a.m. wakeup, designated blocks of time for work, meals, and
activities like “put[ting] things in their places”; there’s also time
allotted for “diversion,” but no hour is without a designated purpose, a
way of ensuring that as much time as possible is spent working toward a
daily goal. In class, many of my students were vocal in their belief
that his schedule was oppressive. A few of them wondered out loud why
anyone would intentionally micromanage their day to such an extreme.
One
possible answer: A timeline means accountability, something I learned
earlier this year after resolving to get a handle on the messiness that
ruled my life. Six months ago, my way of getting things done was
last-minute and without a clearly defined work plan. This was especially
true during periods when I had more flexibility in my
schedule. Last winter break, for example, I had a solid five weeks of
time that, in theory, should have been incredibly productive — I was
largely freed from my daily duties of teaching, meetings, and grading,
and made a long list of things that I hoped to accomplish with all my
free time. Some were abstract (“Get in better shape”) and others more
concrete (“Submit journal article”). I ended up accomplishing a few of
them before the spring term started up, but for the most part, I just
moved my goals from one to-do list to another.
A
few weeks into the new semester, panic started to set in as I
recognized some hard deadlines that were fast approaching. After an
all-nighter grading papers that had me exhausted for days, I knew I
needed to find a better way. In a moment of desperation, I clicked on a
Facebook ad for a paper planner that promised to help me “optimize my
day, tackle my goals, and become happier.”
When
the planner arrived at my door a few days later, I couldn’t help but be
reminded of Franklin’s meticulous planning. Each page was broken down
into 30-minute chunks of time, where I’d have to log everything —
workouts, meals, Netflix watching. There was also space to enter a daily
goal, along with the action items that would help me move closer to it.
As
I sat with my pen in hand, mapping out my exact plan for the next day, I
felt silly. Couldn’t I do this in Google Calendar? Was time-blocking
really the thing that would push me to get things done, or did I just
get duped into buying an expensive notebook? It did feel a
little extreme, scribbling in the time of my spin class and writing down
the exact length of an afternoon break — like I was prematurely sucking
all the spontaneity, all the potential for inspiration, out of the day.
Source: The Cut
