Studying at university was simple. Everything is scheduled and I just have to show up and do whatever is due. I wake up in the morning, pack my stuff and head to the nearest library. I open up my laptop, notes, get headphones ready and start working straight away. I get right into the deep work. And it works, I am good at working like that. Two minutes after I begin, I wouldn’t notice if you dropped a chair next to me.
I continue, take intentional breaks every 25-30 minutes. I do this for three hours and I am done. I have done more work then all the people around me will in the entire day. Also, I quite can’t do much more. I head home, have a walk, maybe a run and squeeze in a bit more work in the evening.
I had the same fixed schedule with my hobbies - running routine, every Tuesday a dancing class. It worked and maybe it still would If I did 9-5, but I can’t. Fixed regime kills me nowadays, I just can’t work under this, it stresses me too much and sucks all joy and satisfaction from life, my productivity quickly dips and everything goes downhill.
Instead, I have a very free schedule for pretty much everything I do - I study at my own pace, same for projects and work, sports. I have very few deadlines and am flexible in goals too. You can never say things like “this product is 100% finished” or “this blog post can’t be edited further”. And I love it, but it takes a lot of effort to make it work. At days, it’s more stressful than a fixed regime, but it improves.
One of the things I came to realize is you still need consistency. Just randomly showing up and working only when you feel like it, doesn’t get you far, nor does it make life particularly enjoyable. Pure chaos is not the way (well, for me at least).
Bellow, you can see a graph of some work I’ve done in two years. The dashed line is average of the given year. In the beginning, I always worked ‘til I was tired, last minute hurrying with unfinished bits, but that always just led to exhaustion the next week when I didn’t do any work.
The change came when I slowly started taking it more easy and stopped before I was actually feeling tired. I stop at the point when I don’t feel bad, when I know I can still do some work. This allows me to show up the next week again without much inner resistance.
You can clearly see, that it’s not the peaks that raised the average, but the valleys that account for the biggest change. It certainly wasn’t easy, but well worth it. I can now plan more accurately and do more job done all the while still having energy for myself when I finish the work. Peace and until next time.