Not so much procrastinating as deciding.

The two can look remarkably similar, especially when the deciding takes time. Too many options + poor prioritising = pain in the arse. C'est la vie.

I seem to have spent much of this year trying (and failing) to sort myself out, specifically in the area of time management. Part of the problem is that, while I have an idea of what I should do, I'm less strong on what I need to do, and have little actual clue about what I want to do. The 'want' and 'should' seem to be diametrically opposed in terms of motivation, which explains why often, not a lot gets done.

Last week I tried to pull it together a bit by returning (seemingly as a dog to its vomit), yet again, to Neil Fiore's Unschedule. This is not only logically sound, but 'feels' sound, which always makes me wonder why it's not more effective. Presumably if I were the sort of organised person who could keep an Unschedule with ease, I wouldn't need it. The principle: procrastinators do not have a realistic idea of how much they have to do, how long it takes, or the available amount of time it takes to get it done. So, map out your time for the next week: on an empty (un)schedule, block out those things you have to do (work, appointments, travel, eating, sleeping) and need to do (sports, recreation, reading, social time with friends). Also, book out one day, perhaps at the weekend, that doesn't get used for 'work,' either paid or personal project. The idea is to get a clear idea of the maximum amount of time you have for "everything else". Then, you mark down project work on the Unschedule only after 30 minutes of uninterrupted work. Stopping early doesn't count. (The flipside of this is self-reward on completion of work, and tallying up hours of work per day to focus what you did complete; the focus of this approach is on starting, not finishing.)

I got this far last week, and managed to keep up with it by dint of printing it out and sticking it next to the computer I normally use. It helped me keep on track, and also shocked me by how little time I had available. So far, so good. I realised over the weekend that I need to do it for the weekend too, as everything went tits-up then without a plan. But, printing out the new one for the coming week, I realised that time available is only part of the problem - the rest is what you choose to do. Which is stating the bleedin' obvious to a certain extent, but it's the part of the problem I've not really focused on before.

So the plan for today (as well as putting the nets back up and cleaning the kitchen floor) is to work out - perhaps in terms of hours per day, or items per week - what I want to do and how I want to do it. Some 'maintenance' work needs to happen round the house and garden, and time needs to be set aside for that. Ditto with professional work and moving the business forward, though again, decisions need to be made there as to how to go about that. But, as for the rest, I think that until I decide on a list of projects and next actions (to use GTD terminology), and set aside regular time to work towards them, they're not going to happen. Some ringfencing needs to occur to stop everything slipping when the unexpected happens. Slipping a bit is ok; sliding completely off the map, never to be seen again, is not.