Productivity Challenge Update/ April Productivity Challenge

My March Productivity Challenge has been a failure. I was going to write an excuse, that it’s been a hectic month, I started a new freelance job, left my service job, finished my community arts course… But in all honesty, I just didn’t push myself enough to achieve my productivity goals for March

But its not all bad. I did start using some tools to help me be realistic with how I spend my time. I got a diary like Conni explains in her blog Freelance Muscle and and I note down how I spend my work day from when I get up to when I go to bed. I set aside time on monday to plan my week and saturday to reflect on it. Rescue Time has also been a great tool. It’s a program that tracks how you use your time on your computer and categories it into groups like Learning and Entertainment and gives you a daily productivity pulse. Some of mine have been high, 80%+ some shockingly low, 34%. It’s been a great wake up call and has made me start evaluating just how much I get distracted when I work online.

Secondly I realised that I was trying to tackle too many challenges at once. Sleep earlier, 90 minute focus routines, better email routines…. So I was relying on willpower and remembering what my challenge actually was. Which didn’t work. Everything else seemed to be more important. So I’m going to focus on building one new habit at a time as Scott H. Young advises.

Productivity Challenge April

So this April I am going to combine my Making Challenge and my Productivity Challenge.

Making challenge- I will write 500 words a day on a topic have some knowledge about. Inspired by James Greig’s How to write every day for a 30 days. I will write a blog post every day for the 30 days of April. I chose 500 words, because it’s an achievable amount of words to write daily. 

Productivity challenge- I will do a 60 minute focus block everyday writing my 500 words. My aim is to do it in the morning, with the internet switched of and full screen to take away any distractions. It means I will have to prepare before hand, so no surfing the internet to read articles.

I’ve set up my word count spreadsheet using James Greig’s template, so you can keep up with my progress, which will help hold me accountable.