Thoughts 2 #MHProductivity?
For a while i’ve been trying to get my head around a specific problem space. I’ve actually been struggling to even articulate what said problem space looks like.
Earlier in the year, I created my first glide app (see thread here):
At the time, I was focusing on the accountability/productivity problem space. In my mind, being accountable solves a number of issues:
If you’re not motivated, having someone to hold you accountable will force you to work
If you are motivated, having someone accountable will give you even more of a reason to continue. Or, at the very least it’ll keep you on track.
etc. etc.
I built the app of the back of an approach I used to take. This approach was quite an arduous one as I had to reflect on my actions for the past hour at the end of every hour. I had to think to myself, “what did I just spend my time doing this last hour?” If it wasn’t something productive* then I’d need to make up for it in the next hour. Productivity at the time was defined as doing something I considered to be useful to my self, but not in excess. i.e. watching an episode of a show on Netflix could be considered as productive if i’d just spent the whole day working and I needed a break. Spending 10 hours watching Netflix if I’d done nothing at all and I didn’t need to rest, however, was not the best way to spend my time and would thus constitute as me being unproductive.
To be honest, I put a lot of pressure on myself, so that’s partially what led to this. On top of that, my definitions change frequently, so sometimes I may have whizzed through books but I won’t consider that as me being productive simply because it doesn’t contribute to the bigger goal.
Anyway, another thing that spurred this was depression. That big ol’ pitch black dark thing that’s constantly looming over. Seeing how unproductive it made me (and others) and how being fed up about being unproductive further contributed to the cycle of beating myself up, probably filtered into the thought process behind creating this pseudo/makeshift app.
I’m still exploring this problem space, and I want to be able to better define it. I want to be able to support people with depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions that aren't completely debilitating to find a way to make the most of their day. There's a cycle to depression where, you blame yourself for not doing work, but you can't do work, and then you blame yourself for that, and the cycle continues. I want to change that...or I think that's what I want to change. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m still exploring this problem space.
I’m also doing this 3 months, 3 months thing which I’ll explain. Because I have a million and one interests, and my brain is always jumping from thought to thought, project to project, i’m imposing a ban on myself to only focus on 1 main project for a max period of 3 months and then revisit other projects or consider whether I want to continue the existing project for an additional period of time. I’ll expand on this in another post.