The Productivity Breakthrough That Got Me to 318 Blog Post in a Row
I write and publish a blog post every single day. As a matter of fact, this is my 318th blog post in a row.
This current streak represents my third attempt at a daily blog. The first time I tried was back in 2012. I only pushed my streak to 45 days in a row. I tried again in 2013-2014 extending my streak to 73 days in a row.
Why Time Management Didn’t Work For Me
In both of those first two attempts my productivity process was based on time management. My focus was completely on allocating my 24 hours each day across tasks. I would set arbitrary time blocks for a task without really knowing if the task would take that amount of time.
For example, I would wake up at 4 or 5:00 am and give myself 1 hour to write. If I got done in 30 minutes, then I would waste the next 30 minutes doing something mindless. If I couldn’t get done in 1 hour, then I would scramble to update my schedule for the day to make room to finish later.
This was tedious, stressful, and a wasteful use of time. As a result, my daily writing streaks didn’t last as I ran out of steam due to using a process that didn’t work. Maintaining discipline with time management as a parent and entrepreneur takes an immense amount of energy. It requires you to be maniacal about your schedule. While this may work on some days and in some scenarios, unquestionably it doesn’t work when your schedule is highly dependent on others.
Moving from Time Management to Task Management
Since my schedule is highly dependent on my wife and my kids, no matter how hard I try to use time management techniques, it’s a failure waiting to happen. So now I plan my day using task management instead.
Task management is all about focusing on output and priorities over time. Instead of planning my day with time blocks, now I just focus on daily task priorities. These tasks can get done at any point during the day, as long as they get done. What’s more, I attack the highest priority task first. If a lower priority task doesn’t get done, it’s the highest priority task for me the next day.
Now, It doesn’t matter if I write my blog at 4:00 am or 4:00 pm. The amount of time it takes me to finish does not matter either. What matters is the quality once it’s complete.
Of course, I have a daily routine of things that just have to get done no matter what. These items aren’t included on my daily task priority list.
The only things I include on my daily task priority list are those things that are important, but not mandatory. In other words, I could procrastinate on these tasks without my life falling apart. However, this procrastination would be detrimental to long term goals.
This is how I write and publish a blog post every single day. Reaching 318 blog post in a row is a big jump from only getting to 73 the last time. This is why I’m a firm believer that task management is the best way to attack those micro-tasks that lead to long term goals.