# New Month's Resolutions

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/new-months-resolutions/11321>\
**Category:** Akrasia\
**Created:** [December 28, 2023, 4:11pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/new-months-resolutions/11321 "2023-12-28T16:11:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 33

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**Author:** ![k1rsty](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/k1rsty/32/3165_2.png) [@k1rsty](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/k1rsty)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2024, 3:35pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/new-months-resolutions/11321/33 "2024-02-26T15:35:15Z")

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# March Goal

[donebytwo](https://www.beeminder.com/k1rsty/donebytwo)

A selection of thoughts that have crossed my mind recently…

- I’m wasting time here but that’s ok I will get to the work later on.
- Why do I spend afternoons staring at my screen thinking I _ought_ to work?
- I find it easy to get stuff done in the morning when I have other commitments in the afternoon.
- I don’t have enough time in the ‘after work’ hours to do all the things I want.
- I have no problem stealing leisure hours for work but feel guilty stealing back the work hours.
- I often keep going until I’ve finished something but then next time I start work I can’t remember what comes next. I might be better stopping in the middle of something instead.

The idea took hold that maybe I should experiment with shorter working hours and see if I could maintain productivity by being more productive in those hours rather than wasting them. So “done by two” is a goal to stop doing company work by 2pm.

I was experimenting with this last week before starting up a goal and it seemed a reasonably good idea. So I set the goal up today to run through the five weeks until the end of March. I was tempted to add some small print to allow myself a bit more freedom but decided to keep it as a dead simple “no work after 2pm” for a few weeks and see how difficult it was. I set it up to require 5.5 days/week, and with two days of buffer which gives me a bit of leeway without creating loopholes from the start.

Hilariously right after setting up the goal I went and fixed a bug I was sent at 1433. It took me seven minutes to locate and fix it but I had no way of knowing that when I picked it up. That’s definitely a failure and I’m going to keep track of them to see perhaps what the small print should be in future.

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