When I decided to commit to a blog post every day this month I knew that I would be challenged. Several days I published later at night, while several days I was able to turn out articles much earlier in the day.

I don’t really track my time that well. I’ve used tools in the past to track time in both my personal and professional life, but none ever really stuck for me. Nor have I gotten into a productivity system based on time, like Pomodoro.

The main reason for this is that I forget. The next reason is that even if I use a tool that will notify me when it’s time to swap tasks or hit record on a timer, I ignore them. I get into the zone on one project finally, and since that’s hard enough for me I try to hold onto that focus as long as I can.

This week has been a particularly challenging one for maintaining any sort of project schedule. After client tasks I’ve been a bit more free form in my day. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

The good thing about having that time available is that I can choose what I want to work on. The bad thing is that I can also choose to not devote enough time to any one project. This week I’ve been doing a lot of research for a potential project, but not much in the way of planning or work on it or any of my other projects.

I’m not saying it’s good or bad to keep a set schedule and track every single task that you do. I’m just thinking that I could benefit from a more well defined set of tasks, and the ability to more easily ignore nonessential tasks that pop up during the day.

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