I was wondering if anyone had come up with a good way to start training yourself to not live on the edge of all of your graphs. We have this handy “x days until you derail” thing, there’s the road width (for those who use it) and it’s various colours, and all kinds of other convenient ways to see the future coming at us… But I still basically end up ignoring every goal except the ones due today.
So, has anyone come up with a good way to incentivize yourself to get a little bit ahead and to build and keep a buffer (without it just becoming a meta-goal that ends up getting skated so that it’s functionally the same)?
Waterfalls: I have morning goals due around lunch, afternoon goals due at the end of the workday, and evening goals due at midnight.
Scheduling: I schedule the more difficult things for the morning and easier things for the afternoon. I keep data on how long it takes me to complete the required progress for each goal. Then I leave extra time in my schedule to either accommodate disruptions to my schedule or to work ahead if things are going smoothly.
Multiple goals: For example, I have goals for writing time and number of words. Usually at least one of those is not red, because my writing speed is not the same for all writing tasks.
Sometimes I go through phases of using foil stars on a calendar to have a physical reward/reminder of my progress. (Yes, I give myself literal gold stars.)
I try to use other tools to say what I should do any given day (including Complice and Habitica). When I follow those, I tend to do stuff that isn’t currently eep. Holding motivation up for using those services can be more challenging
