Fixing my life in 30 days: Day 2

Compartmentalization, Anchoring, and Workout

Didn’t I tell you yesterday I have an idea to organize my multiple tasks together?

Let us begin with that today: I was thinking of compartmentalization.

I’ve told you I do different things, right?
Freelancing, content creation, content consumption, sports, etc.

So compartmentalization allows me to create different blocks of hats I wear.

For example, if I create a block of freelancing: I can work on clients 1, 2, and 3 together and then not touch freelancing the entire day.

This allows me to get into the flow and more importantly, stay in it.

If I am reading → writing for clients → working out → writing for my audience, there’s a lot of hopping between different compartments, which will either disturb my flow or exhaust me more.

So this is what I did today:

  • Spent 5 hours and 15 minutes in the first half of the day freelancing

  • Followed by 1 hour 15 minutes of workout in the evening

  • Spent 3 hours creating content

All this with a bit of IG scrolling, naps, Young Sheldon episodes and some conscious breaks in between.

I want to test compartmentalization for a week and see if it helps.

The downside is some departments can’t be compartmentalized—like sports. I can’t come from practice and hit the gym immediately. I need at least 6 hours gap.

I was speaking to Sreekar the other day. He told me an interesting hack to stay consistent, which I feel will help me in this 30-day thingy.

He mentioned the theory of anchoring.

“We always set a target for what we should achieve, but we don’t keep a ‘minimum anchor target’ to ensure we stay on track,” he said.

For example,

If your goal is reading 10 pages a day, you set up an anchor goal of 2 pages a day. If your schedule doesn’t allow you to hit your goal, you can at least meet the anchor goal of 2 pages.

It ensures you don’t lose momentum (and saves you from the guilt of missing your routine.)

Today was 10x better than yesterday (if I consider the overall aspects I want to improve/fix.) Few highlights include:

  • Did a decent amount of writing for clients. I can relax with client work till Monday. Just some operations here and there. Not a lot of writing.

  • Worked out. Hit the gym after I don’t know how many days. The last time I went to the gym was on 14th October.

  • Did some operations work for my content biz. Created a few memes and tweeted a little. Brainstormed for an exciting project I am coming up with in January.

  • I hardly spend any time with my parents. Keeping this in mind, I spent a decent 15 minutes with mom. I should do this more.

  • Watched 3-4 episodes of Young Sheldon (I really love the show), rewatched a few of Rahul Subramanian’s stand-up videos, and listened to music.

It was more like a work day.

I am meeting my friends tomorrow, so I finished most stuff today (I might post more pictures tomorrow.)

See ya!