The Accountability Journal

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I am a university undergraduate student who's trying to use his own time more efficiently so that I can reach my goals of becoming a medical student while also following my hobbies, such as making art. For the past few years, I've been working on becoming more happy with myself, following Eckhart, Gary van Warmerdam, and Don Miguel's works in order to be less judgmental about who I am. I have improved a ton since just three years ago, when I used to stress about every single day and every single interaction with people, and I would criticize myself for the smallest things. I'm still on the journey to become happier about myself, and I have learned much about who I am and what I want to do in the past year.

I've found Leo Gura when I started to search up on how to become more proficient, since I was becoming more happy with myself, but I was still very lazy at what I was doing. I believe his video on self discipline was the first one I've watched, and I was hooked! I started to watch more of his stuff, and I decided that I wanted to integrate what he was teaching into how I lived. And, as I believe he said, it would be better if I focused on achieving my dreams and becoming successful more than becoming an enlightened person at this point of my life, so I decided to devote more of my time into becoming a great learner in my undergraduate studies in microbiology while also pursuing my hobby of drawing (which I delayed on doing since I was in grade 6, when I wanted to become an artist. See where the anxiety and self loathing comes from? ). 

Anyways, I've been switching between different time management systems (GTD, Evernote with GTD, Todoist, etc) until I found that using pen and paper works best with me. I might talk about how my system developed over the course of 7 months, but I'll leave that to the next journal entry, since my introduction is getting pretty long.

 

I have been working with a time management journal system for a time now, and I have decided to compile the number of pomodoros and other data (time stretches of 25 minutes) I have been doing on excel to see an overview of how productive I have been doing. Needless to say, it became clear that I need to work on becoming better at being accountable with the time I spend, so I am writing a weekly journal on my time management and weekly use of time. 

The picture of the journal system I've been using is attached in the post. (You'll have to forgive me for the really bad handwriting. It's just something I've been struggling with for a while now )

The part of interest for me is the timeline part of the journal, where I write down how many pomodoros I've been working on. The black thick vertical line is to indicate when i switch between doing other tasks/resting and working. Thin black vertical lines are the number of pomodoros.

Black horizontal lines are when I have other obligations that needs to be done (waking up, going to class, travel time, etc) and red horizontal lines are when I am doing non-productive things (video watching, twitter, video games, etc).

 

To summarize, the pomodoros are meant to depict the time I've spent purely focused on tasks that I set out to do for that day, not including classes and lab times. They represent time that I spent being productive.

Red lines, however, are stretches of time I've spent not being productive, such as watching youtube videos, watching video game streams, browsing twitter, etcetera.

 

I've added the pictures of the compiled excel data for the last two weeks.

#pomodoro : how many pomodoros I've done for that day

First pomodoro : when I started my first pomodoro

Last pomodoro : when I finished my last pomodoro

Longest rest stretch : the longest stretch of time when I rested/procrastinated (no data for last week as I've just started recording it starting last Friday)

Significant events : what I spent most of my pomodoros on. One period mean that it is the same as the last day's significant event

 

As you can see, my productivity isn't exactly stellar. There are things I have to work on, especially with the stretches of rest that I justify to myself as being important, but I don't get back to studying again until way later on. I believe that it has to do with how I procrastinate, and it follows the same pattern I've been living in in the past, where I would end up procrastinating for hours on end, watching meaningless videos and reading meaningless feeds of information so that I can forget about the tasks that I have to do. It has to do with avoiding pain, fear, and anxiety.

For example, you can see that I worked tons on Saturday because I was studying for a midterm that was on Monday (MT Study), and I was on a roll that day. However, on Sunday, I completely stopped and procrastinated because I felt that 1. I was ready for the midterm (I wasn't - I still had a few chapters that I had to study) and 2. I could delay studying until later on (I ended up panic studying at night. I didn't even record the number of pomodoros because I was just rushing through the notes as fast as possible without following the necessary pomodoro 25 minute work/5 minuter rest). Avoidance and self-justification is something I will have to work on. 

The method I'm employing to start working even after procrastinating is to realize I'm procrastinating, observe the fear and anxieties I may have and to simply accept it and extend my love towards it (Understanding that it is simply a thought process designed to protect me from 'imaginary harms' and there is no need to hate that part of myself). Then I start a 5 minute timer, and at the end of the five minutes I have to start working.

The problem is also in maybe how I actually feel physical pain when I work for a stretch of time. I believe it has to do with my breathing patterns or my anxiety, but I haven't been able to solve how to fix it. I might make a post on the productivity section of the forum in order to figure out what other people do with the squeezing-like pain in the neck/chest, and if it is normal for other people too. I don't feel it when I am working on my art, however I feel it when I am studying my course notes.

 

Anyways, I'll update this journal every Saturday to keep myself accountable with what I do, and I might even drop some posts between the week in order to write about some significant epiphanies or changes I have made in my productivity or my history working with different time management systems to write out how my productivity system has evolved over the past years so I can better understand myself and how I work. 

Please don't hesitate to drop any posts on tips and comments you may have for me! I'm always extremely grateful for every comment given! 

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Hey guys!

So, what's been happening last week was that I fell in my total productivity for the last week by 2 pomodoros, and I can see the reason why. I've been chatting with some friends even more during the evening, so that I would stop working after ~4 to 5 pm. I've actually put a stop to that and I've told my friends that I will only be able to chat later in the evening. I'll see how that works out for me.

I also have a problem with falling asleep really late, and what I am planning on is that I will go to sleep as soon as I'm home from university (~10-11pm). What I tend to do is that I end up wasting my time browsing the internet and whatnot when I'm home, and I also tend to overeat during that time, since I come home hungry as hell. I'll instead sleep early and wake early. I actually tried it last night, (sleeping at 12am), but I ended up sleeping for 8 hours instead of the 6 hours I'm used to and woke up at my usual waking hours. I'll see if I can work on waking up early to get some things, like meditation and scheduling, before I'm at university.