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patrickmclaren comments on Open Thread: How much strategic thinking have you done recently? - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Emile 28 August 2013 11:48AM

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Comment author: patrickmclaren 29 August 2013 03:34:28PM *  1 point [-]

Just did this last night, actually. I've been noticing that my major goals, i.e. both professional and research goals have been playing host to a number of other side projects, like: learn this new language, write this cool script, start learning the latest trendy math field.

What I ended up doing is allocating 6 hours to my side projects on the weekends, promising to myself that I will use time-tracking, and once 6 hours is filled, spread over whichever projects, then I will not spend any more time on them.

Regarding annoyances, I simply wrote down everything that was annoying me, came up with solutions, wrote the solutions (and deadlines) in my planner, and then I was able to cross them off the list. Once I really got going, my days seemed to become a lot simpler, just because I could see has been bothering and distracting me.

Long term goals were still good. I had effectively been suffering feature creep for a while, and for now I can work much more efficiently.