One of the most challenging areas of self discipline in life is time management. I often find myself in situations where I do not have enough time to complete all the things that I want to do. And it’s not because I am procrastinating; the second I get home from work I jump right into some new side project or video. The problem is that there are simply too many things that I want to do right now, and learning the personal discipline to say no to myself is challenging.
Here are some of the things that I want to do right now:
- Start a podcast about programming
- Create more blog posts
- Upload more videos to my YouTube channel
- Start a new YouTube channel
- Work on a side project that I could potentially sell
- Start another podcast about self improvement
- Download and play Apex legends
- Plan a vacation somewhere
- Try some animation
- Volunteer somewhere
My mind is a two lane tunnel. If I try to jam all of these ideas at once, then there is going to be a traffic jam and nothing is going to come out (mental constipation?)
Here is what a disciplined person would do: They would proceed one idea at a time and work their way through the list. It’s boring and slow, but it will get the job done.
What I found to help is to take the fail fast approach to all of these things. Quickly try out a podcast episode and see how I like the process. If it works, then continue doing it. If I find that I absolutely hate it, then move on to something else. You will have to discipline yourself to not get distracted by new ideas. I found that creating a sort of “backlog” that I can put fresh ideas on to revisit later helps.
Another thing that I found helpful is to allocate a specific times during the day for different tasks. For example, before work, I will whiteboard some podcast ideas then work on YouTube when I come home later that day.
There was a quote I once heard from an unknown source that said, “We overestimate how much we can get done in a year, but underestimate how much we can get done in 10 years.” As a millennial who’s used to getting everything instantly on the internet, it’s frustrating to have to wait for things to be done. All the while, I feel like I am falling behind all these other people who are doing amazing things. However, learning to manage my time effectively between projects along with failing fast has been the only solution that has worked in trying to accomplish all the things that I want to do. Otherwise, I would just sit and get overwhelmed and frustrated and not do anything.