March is the part of the year where I wake up from the seemingly infinite possibilities of January/February and realize I’m probably not getting this thing done when I want it done.

Update 3 is complete, but we haven’t completed a test without a crash to really write a test report yet. So this week you get a blog post about personal habits relating to productivity! The Internet doesn’t have enough of those.

So this week I’ve started to focus on removing microbreaks from my workflow. Which are basically quick things (as in a few seconds to a few minutes) that aren’t work, like reloading a website to check for updates, that you do while working. I think proper 15+ minute breaks are a legitimate great strategy for refreshing yourself to help get things done, but these microbreaks have dogged me for awhile now and I think they’re way more bad than good. Here’s why:

 

1. Multi-tasking takes a mental toll. It’s bad for staying in the flow.

Some scientists said that, I think. And I believe it. It seems like I generally feel way more tired from the constant switching than I do from the actual work. Sometimes it feels like they fit into the flow in a nice way (distract self for a few seconds to think about a problem), but if I stop to think about it they likely just make it impossible to get into the flow in the first place. That critical period where you just need to push through to get into flow in the first place.

2. They don’t actually refresh you.

Because you’re spending so much energy going back and forth you never really get your brain to go into a cooldown state of focusing on something else for awhile. So you’re taking break time without really getting anything out of it. I bet some scientist said something like that.

3. Feeble human minds don’t accurately measure them.

If you asked me how much time I spent of microbreaks prior to installing ProcrastiTracker I would have given you a time that is nowhere near as large as reality. Since they’re sandwitched so tightly between actual work I just…don’t realize how much time they’re actually taking. As a person who doesn’t watch a lot of movies because it’s super easy to measure how much time they’re going to take and that amount of time is way too long for my tastes, I don’t like this at all.

4. Boredom is good.

I’ve probably gotten most of my best work done out of boredom. Boredom is great for getting work done because it makes doing work funner than being bored. When you have a non stop buffet of distractions you don’t really get bored per se. And that’s bad for business.

 

In conclusion I have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t listen to me. So far results have been decent, but not amazing. We’ll see how long I can keep this up.