Preamble

Happy New Year. Typically I’m not a fan of so-called “New Year’s Resolutions,” but I happened to be thinking about this beforehand and it happens to be a new year, so what’re ya gonna do? *shrug

Recently I was happily reminding myself how I used to be someone who didn’t get things done, before college. Yes, before college, I was easily distracted, had no real ambition or drive, couldn’t set or keep goals, etc. Then, over the four and a half years that I was in college, I learned the benefits of working hard, meeting deadlines, and finishing projects. And now, as a full-fledged engineer, I…

…aw heck I’m reverting to my old self (albeit with more specialized knowledge).

“Got a deadline at work in a month? Sure, write that down, then browse Reddit.”

“Time to work on work! But first, I’ve been meaning to research space-saving techniques for deep kitchen drawers.”

“I don’t have any meetings today anyway, so it can wait.”

Heck, I’m sitting here writing a blog post instead of working on my relay testing procedure, though my excuse for this is two-fold: one, it’s a sort of call-to-action for myself. Two, I want to type something quickly with my new keyboard. That last point has nothing to do with productivity, but boy, am I having a good time.

It strikes me as odd how, as a parent to a new, sub-two-year-old human, I am so good at helping her evade certain bad habits and pitfalls. If I see her staring at a phone or a screen, I’ll turn the phone or screen off (or I’ll turn her around if we’re at a restuarant or something). Why do I do this? Well, staring at screens constantly can’t be good for you. I don’t even need to read a research paper about it to know that – just look around at all the so-called “iPad babies” and you’ll see what the effect of spending your infanthood placated by a screen will do to you.

What if my daughter wants to only eat cheese? No, she needs some vegetables too. Sure, I’ll tell her that the brocolli is cheese, but deep down, I know the truth (and I rue the day that she learns the truth as well). She wants to watch her favorite cartoon? Sure, but only one episode a day. Maybe two if she’s been good (and if I’m really tired), but no more than that. Look at me, sacrificing my option to continue lying down so that she has the benefit of not staring at a screen for longer than an hour.

Well, then I go and don’t parent myself in the same way. I stare at screens for, like, ten hours a day. Sure, a lot of it is at work, but I’m not necessarily always doing work during that screen time. What about if I’m using the restroom? You betcha, I’m on my phone. What about at home? Sure, I’ll glance at my phone for one or two minutes… or is it hours? And what if I want to watch a movie or play a game after the kiddo goes to bed? There’s some more screen time.

I’m not going to necessarily say that screen time is bad. In reality, I think I’m fairly OK at managing it. I spend a lot of time not staring at a screen as well, when I can help it, and I get fairly conscious of the fact that my eyes hurt if I’ve been staring at a screen too much. So no, I’m not going to make some resolution to stare at screens less, but I will make some resolution to stare only at useful things on screens. Movies are useful because I watch them with my wife or friends. Games are useful because they’re how I relax, if the game is good. And if the game is bad, or the movie is bad, I just don’t finish it. So I’m clearly not addicted to that.

I do, however, find myself on Reddit more often than I should be, or on youtube, or heck, even facebook sometimes (because I’m getting old, I guess). I usually feel like I’m not wasting my time because I’m either researching something so I can add details to one of the many dozens of projects that I have backed up within my organizational system, or I’m learning some random tidbit that, in reality, I’m not likely to use (like how interlacing works in old television signals).

Earlier, I mentioned school forcing me to be more structured. After thinking about it, I think I realize that I’ve had the ability to be structured all along, but I lacked the appropriate measures to force – or trick – myself into being structured. In school, you pay for the class, you have deadlines, and if you don’t make your deadline, then you don’t pass the class (and, in my case, your favorite professor will tell you he’s disappointed in you as well). These are really good motivators. Now, in the engineering work environment, I’ve got projects that have either no deadline, or barely any deadline, or a deadline that’s way off in the future. Due in 2026? Do in 2026, I guess. Really, though, like eating too much junk food, or scrolling on Reddit for too long, after a while, it just makes me feel bad. Not bad, even, but horrible. I know I can amount to more, and I want to, but the reality is I am addicted to procrastinating, or not working, or something. Maybe not directly, but definitely indirectly, at least.

My Addictions

I would say my main three addictions are as follows:

1. scrolling around on websites “learning” things (at times when I’m not supposed to be) (this is the big one, and why I named my post the way I did),
2. monster energy drinks (unrelated to above, but it’s the truth),
3. online shopping.

I debated that last one, since it feels similar to the first one, in that I’m just scrolling around. I don’t really buy anything, but I window shop online a lot. I figured I’d be a little more organized and include it as a third, since I like things to come in threes, and it feels a bit different than my other scrolling habits.

I’m not even sure what I’m going to do about these, yet. Work on stopping them, I guess. I just wanted to get them written out somewhere and posted so there’s some sort of “real,” “tangible” thing that declares that I have some issues with those things. It just makes me feel a bit better, kinda like I’m doing something. Of course, I’ll still have to do something after posting this.

I think it shouldn’t be too hard to break these bad habits. I’ll install some extension to block reddit on my work laptop and on my phone during certain hours, or maybe just entirely. I do a lot of research using Reddit, but I can maybe go do that research on my PC at home, and not at work. If I complain internally that I won’t have a chance to do that research because I’ll be busy handling the baby or the pregnant wife, well, then it’ll give me a chance to reflect if that research is actually important or not. If it is, then I’ll find a way. If it’s not, then maybe I don’t research it.

The path to quitting energy drinks is pretty simple: drink moar coffee. I’ll have to just time it right so I can handle the crash that’ll come along with losing the other stuff they jam into Monsters. Also, more sleep = more awake?

The online shopping bit shouldn’t be too hard, since I already don’t really do that as much as I used to (but mostly because it was replaced with random Reddit scrolling). I’ll have to be careful that I don’t just replace Reddit with Slickdeals and still not get anything done.

Anyway, this post was fairly disorganized and off the cuff, but so am I, so here it is.

Developing a Roadmap

I am not by any means a neuroscientist, or a productivity guru, or anything of those sorts, but I feel like I know myself, and I understand cause and effect. To me, it makes sense that the easiest way to overcome a challenge would be to develop a roadmap for overcoming that challenge. I would think that this roadmap would have three basic sections:

• section 1: Start
• section 2: Obstacles
• section 3: End

Section 1: Start

Section 1 of destroying a bad habit, to me, would encompass a couple of different things. First, it’s important to see just how bad the habit is. Take some time, see how many Monsters you drink every day, and see if it’s really a problem. One every week or so if you don’t sleep well? That’s fine. One a day for no reason? That’s probably not fine. Drinking more Monster than water? Definitely not fine. Drinking Monster after noon? No. (These are all “me” by the way).

The other part of the Starting section of destroying a habit, I would think, would be identifying some key changes that can be made to help the start to be easier. For example, I typically stop at a gas station on the way to work every day to buy a Monster. I do this because I don’t want to keep Monsters around the house, because I don’t really want people at my house (i.e. my wife) to know that I’m addicted to them. Well, recently we had Christmas break, and my ability to drive off to a gas station diminished, so I determined that I would just buy a 12-pack and keep them in my car. I was not subtle with my wife about the fact that I was drinking them, and when she asked why I was drinking them, I decided to just pull the rug on myself and be honest: I’m drinking them because I have a mild addiction (heck, I even wrote out “mild” to feel better about it) and worse, if I didn’t drink one, then I’d feel really awful, and I didn’t want to feel awful during the Christmas season.

That’s all a long-winded way to say that ever since I’ve bought them en masse and kept them in my car, I haven’t gone to a gas station to get a drink. In some ways, buying a big pack of Monster has helped – it enabled me to tell my wife that I have a problem with them, and it stopped my attending a gas station daily. Eventually, my somewhat weak habit of stopping at a gas station every morning will break, and this will hopefully help me to stop my heavier habit of drinking a Monster every day. Going to a gas station was definitely a trigger, because I’d notice that if I went in to a gas station, even if I felt fine, I’d gravitate toward the Monster section, and probably end up buying one. That’s addiction, folks.

Section 2: Obstacles

The second section of my plan is to determine what obstacles I will encounter, and how to get around them. In the case of not drinking Monsters, I figure that the biggest obstacle is going to be caffiene withdrawal. That one is fairly easy to account for: drink coffee. I am definitely going to feel sluggish without the other crap that Monster puts in their drinks, though, like Taurine and Creatine. The best solution that I can think of is to just be easy and honest with myself, and not schedule my withdrawal during a time when I might really need to be awake (say, in a few months when my son is born).

Breaking any bad habit will present obstacles. Your two options are to give up, or find a way around the obstacle.

Section 3: End

It’s important to determine what the end of a goal looks like. That might seem obvious, but I don’t see a lot of people doing this, and it causes them to work forever on open-ended projects. Developing a solid idea of what “complete” looks like on a goal will help you to finalize your goal. This Section, honestly, is probably the most important Section of them all. Figure out what “done” looks like and work your way back to where you are now. You’ll end up with a completed roadmap to follow. The alternative is not to develop an idea of what “done” looks like, then wander in the endless void of “trying to be productive” without actually getting anything done.

In the case of the Monster energy drinks, it’s quite clear: “done” means I don’t drink them anymore, and I don’t feel withdrawal without them.

Final Monster Roadmap

My roadmap for my Monster Energy Drink Bad Habit Disposal Program looks like this:

I’m sure it can be fleshed out, but it’s not a bad start.

Work Productivity Roadmap

What about being productive at work? That’s what started this whole ramble, anyway, right?

Well, here is the quick roadmap I developed:

Start and Aids

The way I see it, being productive at work is something that is a trained skill. As of now, my “START” is that I don’t have this skill.

I thought of three things that could aid me in my start. First, I’m distracted at work, so why not work somewhere else? Sometimes I can work from home – maybe I can go work from a coffee shop some day and practice being productive there. I’ve apparently trained myself that my desk is somewhere where I can slack off. I could pair this with moving to a different part of my desk if I notice that I’m slacking off, and keeping my computer screens as “work only” zones.

A second, more obvious aid would be to block Reddit and youtube. I can install Spotify for my music listening needs, and that will be less distracting.

A third, less obvious aid is to assign only one task to myself per day. According to my goal, I want to get three things done per day. That’s a huge number, though, when your current number is somewhere between zero and one. If I start off by allowing myself to take it a bit easier and only focus on doing one productive thing per day, then maybe I won’t be too stressed by having a lot of things to work on.

A fourth aid that I thought of as I was writing this was to do fifteen minutes of actual work first – don’t fiddle with the music, don’t check emails, don’t open the phone, just open whatever work item is on the desktop and work on it for fifteen minutes to set the tone of the day.

Obstacles

The biggest obstacle that I came across is also one of the biggest triggers for my distractedness at work: I get bored. The work is kinda boring, which I normally like, but when it’s boring, something like Reddit or Youtube will always be more interesting. If I get bored, and I’ve successfully blocked out more “interesting” things like Reddit or Youtube, then I can get up and go take a walk, or read a book for a few minutes, or something like that. In essence, my goal with this obstacle is to ensure that I end up finding not working to be more boring than working.

A secondary obstacle is the issue of deadlines: I don’t have any motivation to get things done if I don’t have deadlines. The answer to that is obvious: make some deadlines. These deadlines will only be for myself, though if I find out that those aren’t working, then I’ll start telling these deadlines to my boss during our one-on-one meetings. Then, if I don’t accomplish them, or at least show some progress, my secret lack of productivity will show through and I’ll be doomed. Gotta keep it real!

End

In my mind, I will have accomplished this goal when I am able to successfully work on something at work for thirty minutes straight without getting distracted, and when I’m able to get three work tasks done per day. (For those of you who think that three tasks is a tiny number, keep in mind that in my world, a single task such as “review this report” can take, like, two or three hours, if not two or three days).

Online Shopping

I won’t spend much time on this. My plan for this habit is, instead of window shopping my three main sites (meh.com, woot.com, slickdeals.net), I will review my projects for home and life, determine what I need to be on the lookout for, and then set alerts on these websites for those items. I don’t need to be scrolling around on Slickdeals, seeing a deal for pants, or a phone charger, or a docking station, and feel impulsed to purchase this thing that I don’t need.

Epilogue

God I hope I can pull this off, lol.