For me – the true test of a new productivity system / device is always “what happens when I hit a ‘screw it’ point” – when I’ve been putting in a lot of effort and then realize a bunch of work was all worthless due to larger priorities outside of my control.
Can I avoid spiraling out? How quickly can I recover from it, and get back to a really productive place again.
In some cases I might be significantly slower for 1-3 weeks until I really get some momentum going again.
Until then it’s hard to say if some system I’m trying is actually working / robust enough.
Well after about 6 weeks of Beeminder, yesterday was one of those days.
I’d been pushing really hard on 2 projects for a couple months, and within 48 hours I realized that it’s likely that neither of them will go anywhere, for red-tape reasons out of my control.
I was pretty demoralized.
But I had my red line coming up, and I still had like 12 tasks to finish for the day.
I took an hour off, took a nap, went for a walk.
When I got back and looked at the red counter, I genuinely thought “maybe I should just pay the $5 and say f— it for today”, who cares. People would understand, blah blah.
But first I did a couple tasks, kept making progress… and just kept rolling. Finished the day off strong and got things lined up for today.
It’s still a bummer, but now my primary sense of accomplishment is linked to my overall pace, not to progress on specific problems. I can still get those personal highs & momentum regardless of what happens to any specific project.
So it’s fine. I’m back.
Just 1 day. Let’s go.
