Hello Sebastian! How are you? :)

So I decided to follow your advice on time tracking and made a template for myself:

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Woke up at:
Hygiene (Brushed, Cleaned, Shaved):
Early Maintenance (Mail, News, Facebook, Forums, Work):

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Programming (1h):
Studying (2h):
Reading (2h):
Workout (30m) :

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Late Maintenance:

***

COMPLETED:

Computer uptime:
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What do you think about it?

Also I have a question about your beginnings with time tracking. I'm having a rough time tracking time every day. It's like I do this one day and then skip for a whole week and then next day again and so on. Did you have these kind of trouble at the beginning too? If you did how did you get over it?

I would really appreciate your thoughts on this.

Regards!
-V

Hey V,

I am good, thanks! I'm banging this email out quickly before I'm en route to Saigon. Bye Singapore! It's been fun.

Let's talk about consistency with time tracking, and indeed, all habits in general -

"It's like I do this one day and then skip for a whole week and then next day again and so on. Did you have these kind of trouble at the beginning too? If you did how did you get over it?"

Yup, indeed I did. My first start at tracking was in January 2010 in Taipei, Taiwan. I read this excellent Lifehacker article on Jerry Seinfeld's method of writing jokes every day, called "Don't break the chain" - he would try to do a little jokewriting every day, no matter what, and then mark the calendar if he did.

Well, I implemented something like that, and I had amazing results that month. Really, January 2010 is one of the nicest months in my life. Damn near everything went right that month on all levels. Magnificent.

For some damn reason, Taiwan only gives Americans 30 days visa-free. It's, like, the only place I've been with visa waiver that only gives you 30. So I left after 30 days, sadly, because I loved Taipei. Really a great city. After that, I was in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand.

For some reason, I just stopped tracking after I was in transit. Then I kind of started again for 3-4 days, and then I didn't do it again for six months or so until I was in Korea.

WTF?

I don't know, man. Us humans, we're kind of defective and stupid in some ways. We identify something that's really, really good for us. We do it for a while. It works really well, increasing quality of life, happiness, productivity, and gets us closer to our most important goals...

...then we stop doing it for some damn fool reason.

Can't explain it. Don't understand. It's kind of crazy and stupid.

So yes, I've had false starts. I have two big thoughts for you here -

1. Get something down. At the very end of the day, estimate what the day's breakdown is. Just open your file or notebook or whatever, and put something down. This isn't just for time tracking, it's for going to the gym, calling your Mom regularly, whatever that's important to you.

Like, if you're too worn out or sick or tired to go to the gym, go anyways, at least for 10 minutes. Go, do a super light workout, shower, go home. Then you haven't broken your general patterns and commitments. Breaking commitments completely makes it easier to break commitments completely more going forwards. But doing it just a little bit even strengthens the habit.

2. Start with the hard stuff.

This is actually my one critique of your time tracking, which I like but I have one issue with - don't start with "Mail, News, Facebook, Forums" - don't do that. Start with your non-deadline, expansive, important creative projects, your programming or hustling or whatever.

When you start with the easy, no effort stuff, it's far more likely the more important, more challenging stuff doesn't get done. So I'd move it around.

Final thought - answering some "yes/no" questions at the end of the day is very good for me. This is my current set of them -

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CHALLENGES:
Did I start the day in my planner instead of online?
Did I only check email when I was ready to write back immediately?
Did I only check a site once, then done with it?
Did I check "Current Targets" if I caught myself wasting time?
Did I prioritize books/good learning instead of mindless surfing?
Did I make war on procrastination?
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Might be worth getting something like that. Just the first question, starting in the planner instead of online goes a long way towards making sure you track - because if not, you have to mark "No" - just make sure you do open it up at the end of the day at the very least, and write an ultra-short summary of the day. If you've fallen off track some, that's fine, but doing something goes a long way towards not getting negative inertia.

Cheers, and please update me on the time tracking with how it goes going forwards, best wishes.