I have been through many changes in the past year. I quit my job, I traveled for months and am currently designing the next phase of my life. To make an informed choice, and set plausible goals, I decided to apply some agile methodologies to my personal workflow.
Let me share them with you.
Task Tracking
One could argue that the first thing to set is some goal. “I want to publish this video” or “I am going to start a blog”.
Well, of course it is very important toward a specific goal, but going from zero to hero has not provided me great successes in the past. I have also been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and he states clearly that the how is more important than the what.
Hence I started tracking tasks. I defined a list of simple things that I wanted to accomplish during this month, such as deploying a web service, repimping my website, editing videos or simply organising my work. I used a Trello Kanban board to see clearly how things were moving around.
I didn’t even get to start many of these in the end, but I succeded in some and I feel like I can be proud of this.
And more than the tasks themselves, I used a pomodoro tracking approach. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a work method that makes you take a break after a set amount of time (I use 25 minutes work, 5 break).
As I am lazy af and just starting this serious work for myself thing, I set my goal to 8 pomodoros per day, about 4 hours. Needless to say, I failed hard most of the time. And that’s ok! Here is a short summary of what I did:
Week 1
Short week, lasted 3 days because of traveling.
- 7🍅 dithering apis
- 12🍅 editing
- 3🍅 website
- 2🍅 other
Total: 24🍅 or 12h.
Week 2
Realised “other” is not very descriptive as task name at the end of the week.
- 11🍅 editing
- 13🍅 dithering apis
- 3🍅 organising
- 12🍅 other
Total: 39🍅 or 18.5h
Week 3
I was not so good. Focusing on website development was easier than scattering among multiple projects.
- 6🍅 editing
- 3🍅 career & organisation
- 21🍅 personal website
Total: 30🍅 or 15h
Week 4
After finalizing a v1 for the apis, I started exploring various options for the next big task.
- 8🍅 learning
- 6🍅 writing
- 3🍅 blogging
- 6🍅 editing
- 9🍅 dithering apis
- 2🍅 other
Total: 34🍅 or 17h
Results
So, quite a number of hours, about half of a normal work week. Given I’ve often struggled with motivating myself even for the most basics task after years of no personal effort, I consider this a major success.
I did not list many activities, such as improving guitar skills (including some rather boring exercises), learning basics of music production, sport and working in the attic. I feel like all these activities are not directly tied to my career advancement, or that are already an habit in my life (sports especially).
One of the results I had was editing a short clip using some tracks I recorded. I had been thinking about something to do with these images since February, so I am very happy about it!
And yes, I have a lot of unprocessed stuff.
I also published some dithering apis, and well, this same website ;-)
I also advanced on some minor projects, before turning to a learning path.
Evaluation
I have been using a start-stop-continue approach week by week to direct my process, and it definetely helped. Either I am a good manager or a good employee, cause the reviews were all the time overall positives.
This has already been really motivating, so I think it was a tough but necessary first-month.
I especially feel more resolute and serious about how I tackle challenges.
I also spent some time actually thinking about m next career steps and evolution, deciding on a rough outline for the next months.
I am a bit scared about being able to keep this level of efficiency while traveling or having more social interactions, but this is what retrospectives are for, right?
October has a week in Southern Italy planned, volunteering at a festival in Paris and possibly some quick detour to the Netherlands. Definetely a challenge to keep up the good work, but I am serious about my goals!
Cheers!