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Maintenance, Productivity, and Recreation

Gray Blimp

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I've found my time is spent doing 1 of 3 things, Maintenance, Productivity, or Recreation.

Maintenance, is time spent doing things that aren't productive, but are things you have to do anyway, life's chores, such as eating, sleeping, doing laundry, cleaning, shaving, showering, going grocery shopping, getting gas, backing up computer, working out/physical activity, going to work (slowlane).

Productivity, is time spent pursuing your fastlane business or enhancing it/yourself. Learning, reading (substantial, relevant content), researching, contacting certain people. Doing. I'm in the process on learning HTML and CSS.

Recreation, time spent hanging out with friends, family, watching movies, playing video games, posting on forums like I am right now, etc.


I wanted some perspective from others. I spend WAY too much time on maintenance. I spent 20 minutes on laundry today, I couldn't believe it. A third of an hour of my weekend spent on that. And of course, can't forget my 52.5 hours/week of slow lane.

I have time blocks devoted to each thing, and I try to maintain a schedule. But productivity and recreation always seem to take a hit. Weekend after weekend.

I do improve and grow every week but it is not at the pace I want. Anyone dealt with the same thing, have any advice, or a different perspective?


Thanks & Goodnight everyone!
 
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MetalGear

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I am being challenged by this to. I think the key is to be intentional. Maybe stop buying new clothes and throw some stuff out? Clear the clutter so you can make decisions more easily. I only wear black socks now for example, because pairing socks is a waste of life! :)
 

Argue

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You should outsource your laundry. Get the people at the laundromat to do it for you. You spend more money but that frees up time for the productivity category. I outsource my laundry, I hate doing laundry lol.

As for cleaning, shaving, working out etc, you can listen to an audio book/webinar while doing these activities. Like MJ said, he uses toilet university.

During the time spent on the toilet, do some work on the laptop or maybe listen to an audio book. Good way to manipulate time.

At work, if permitting, work on productivity. Use your lunch break to practice your coding. It's not fun but if you really want it, you don't mind putting in the action.

Recreation is good but in moderation. Too much of it is bad and becomes a bad habit/addiction. My suggestion: reward yourself after a good amount of action (work) was taken.

For example, completeing your website. Thereafter, visit the forum or play a video game for 45 minutes. Control is key.

Of course everything can't be perfect but commitment to process is ultimately the winner and secret.
 
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Gray Blimp

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I am being challenged by this to. I think the key is to be intentional. Maybe stop buying new clothes and throw some stuff out? Clear the clutter so you can make decisions more easily. I only wear black socks now for example, because pairing socks is a waste of life! :)

I did waste some time pairing socks. Being OCD is definitely a weakness. I would add that buying the same exact brand/type of socks will help, so you can just throw them all in a drawer. I hate throwing stuff out, but I've never even bought new clothes (besides socks) because I always get clothes for Christmas. I still have too many. Only 7 days a week and I could go probably 10 weeks without wearing the same shirt.

You should outsource your laundry. Get the people at the laundromat to do it for you. You spend more money but that frees up time for the productivity category. I outsource my laundry, I hate doing laundry lol.

As for cleaning, shaving, working out etc, you can listen to an audio book/webinar while doing these activities. Like MJ said, he uses toilet university.

During the time spent on the toilet, do some work on the laptop or maybe listen to an audio book. Good way to manipulate time.

At work, if permitting, work on productivity. Use your lunch break to practice your coding. It's not fun but if you really want it, you don't mind putting in the action.

Recreation is good but in moderation. Too much of it is bad and becomes a bad habit/addiction. My suggestion: reward yourself after a good amount of action (work) was taken.

For example, completeing your website. Thereafter, visit the forum or play a video game for 45 minutes. Control is key.

Of course everything can't be perfect but commitment to process is ultimately the winner and secret.

The drive to the laundromat would nullify the time I spend doing it myself. I do listen to podcasts while doing any of these tasks though so that is good. I guess what my main concern is, is the doing part, as referenced in another thread. I spent 2 hours doing yesterday (such as actually typing and practicing). I get almost no doing done during the week though.

Thank you both for your suggestions.
 
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AndrewNC

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Productivity, is time spent pursuing your fastlane business or enhancing it/yourself. Learning, reading (substantial, relevant content), researching, contacting certain people. Doing. I'm in the process on learning HTML and CSS.
I don't see any of this as being productive. Maybe contacting certain people, depending on the context of it.

Maybe I'm wrong...
 

Waspy

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Another vote for outsourcing as much of your maintence as you can. Stuff like backing up your computer should have been automated since like 2009!

If you work a slowlane job playing say $30 an hour. Why wouldn't you hire a cleaner for $15 a hour for a few hours a week? If it frees up those hours for yourself. Plus the cleaner is a professional, probably better at it than you...
 

RMarques

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watching movies, playing video games

How much time do you spend doing these things?
I think there's value in doing every day things, but I personally don't see value in playing games or watching most movies.
 
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Gray Blimp

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Another vote for outsourcing as much of your maintence as you can. Stuff like backing up your computer should have been automated since like 2009!

If you work a slowlane job playing say $30 an hour. Why wouldn't you hire a cleaner for $15 a hour for a few hours a week? If it frees up those hours for yourself. Plus the cleaner is a professional, probably better at it than you...

Do you have a computer backup service you can recommend? Isn't this a form of giving up control? As for the cleaner, I don't trust people, but don't have a better excuse than that.

I don't see any of this as being productive. Maybe contacting certain people, depending on the context of it.

Maybe I'm wrong...

Andrew, what do you see as being productive? I am a noob to this mindset, and have no skills. I think I need to first build a foundation, but if I'm going at this wrong, what would you do?

How much time do you spend doing these things?
I think there's value in doing every day things, but I personally don't see value in playing games or watching most movies.

Too much time. 0-4 hours a week. But it used to be even worse than that. Sometimes I just want to stop thinking, if that makes sense.
 

AndrewNC

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Andrew, what do you see as being productive? I am a noob to this mindset, and have no skills. I think I need to first build a foundation, but if I'm going at this wrong, what would you do?

You don't have to answer on the forum, but think of exactly what you need to do. Whatever problem you're serving in the market.

As entrepreneurs, we learn by doing. We take action and then use reading as a reference. It's not like the academic world where you gain a lot of knowledge and then one day put it to use.

For example, I built an iOS app company which now has 1.02 million downloads.

I honestly have no clue who to code apps. I don't even know what coding language they are programmed in. I think the letter C and some plus or minus symbols are in the name. I don't know.

I found the market, I found an open source code, and then followed one tutorial teaching me enough how to edit the code how to get what I want.

Yes, learning is important, but I like to speed up the process.

I don't know the specifics for you, but hope that helped.
 

Kingmaker

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I went to extremes in trying to free up time, outsource mindless tasks, becoming minimalist etc before... None of it helped at all, maybe marginally.

Only thing that worked is to block out a time window and work on your hairiest, nastiest tasks. The shit you are deep down scared of, selling, getting your product ready for the launch, launching before it's "perfect". Deep work, not shallow work. (Read Deep Work by Cal Newport). This only takes 1-4 hours a day and even if you sleep for the rest of the day and don't do any additional work, you'll still be farther ahead than someone who did 12 hours but spent it on split testing colors of random borders on their website.
 
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Waspy

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Do you have a computer backup service you can recommend? Isn't this a form of giving up control?

Do you use a PC or Mac?

I think you are taking the control thing a little literally. It's only giving up control if your business is backing up computers. You can't do all things at all times, that's not what the control commandment is implying
 

Gray Blimp

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Do you use a PC or Mac?

I think you are taking the control thing a little literally. It's only giving up control if your business is backing up computers. You can't do all things at all times, that's not what the control commandment is implying
For now, as long as windows 7 is supported, I use PC. When they stop supporting it, who knows what I'll do then.

I was taking it too literal. But this problem stems from the common "Do-It-Yourself Vs Outsource" debate. The real reason I'm weary of these online backup solutions is that I don't trust any of them. Just like the cleaners. I don't trust anyone though, so I guess that's another problem for another thread.
 

MidwestLandlord

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For now, as long as windows 7 is supported, I use PC. When they stop supporting it, who knows what I'll do then.

I was taking it too literal. But this problem stems from the common "Do-It-Yourself Vs Outsource" debate. The real reason I'm weary of these online backup solutions is that I don't trust any of them. Just like the cleaners. I don't trust anyone though, so I guess that's another problem for another thread.

Control isn't about controlling everything, control is about having choices. If you use a computer backup service you still have control because you can choose which service you use, and if they give poor service, you fire them and find another.

Controlling everything is called perfectionism and is a quick path to both insanity and action faking.
 
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