Daniel R.

Why then, you may ask, is this entry not entitled an hour a day? In being realistic about my growing inability to work on anything, I'm hoping to within that hour focus 20 minutes on 2 different tasks for at least 20 days each month. Why 2 tasks? Well one thing that I know I've not been doing recently is reading technical books. 20 minutes, with a 10 minute buffer to clear my head, jot down thoughts unrelated to what I'm reading, is about what it takes I've found to get through a chapter of most technical books. I'm not a speed reader so that feels like a good pace and amount.

Now with a little reading out of the way, the goal would be to use the other half of that hour to work on a side project. I've read that it usually takes 10 - 15 minute of uninterrupted time to "get into the flow". Which means that if I think optimistically that it takes 10 minutes, that gives me 20 minutes of good flow time and the other half of the hour.

To me the balance between learning and do always has to be there, part of the reason that I loved Northeastern's cooperative education program so much. The last part about 20 days a month is to help me keep in mind that not every day do I necessarily have that hour. In fact I'd say spending that hour socializing and having fun with friends on board game night is probably a better spent hour in the long run. As such 20 days a month still means that the majority of the month I'm still making progress on the mountain of books and some itch that I like to scratch. The quantified self in me says that I'll also want to track that I'm doing just that.

Update: Had the thought this morning that I should have called this post my "20-20 vision". Ha, I pun me.