Day 2: Success in the face of failure

Tonight Annie's parents were over and are spending the night. This meant no Gears of War (as her dad stays up until like 2AM watching TV, and I'm really not comfortable slicing Locusts into two gory chunks with my chainsaw bayonet) so I had a good chance of getting some work done. I decided tonight was a good night to finish the GMAT prep test (as you're really supposed to do it all in one session).

I tried to complete the test in the kitchen (attached to the family room, where the other three were watching TV), but I was too distracted, so I bounced to the guest bedroom. I completed the test (completed each multiple-choice section in less than the 75 minutes given for each) and began work on the "diagnostic questions" in the GMAT test book I borrowed from best buddy Bill. I got about six math questions done in 20 minutes before Annie's mom wanted to go to sleep, which required me leaving the guest bedroom. So chalk up another success.

Date: 2/20/07
Status: Success
Project: GMAT prep
Time: ~70 minutes

Day 1: Failure before Starting

Today is President's Day. I got it off from work. Annie (my fiance) and I had a few chores to do, including some shopping (I am one of those guys who enjoys the mall. Hey, I grew up in New Jersey, give me a break). I also had social video game plans for 9:30 PM (finishing Gears of War on insane difficulty with Ryan). So my plans for today were relatively modest, but more than the 30 minute goal:

• Complete a practice GMAT test. Total time alloted for test: 2.5 hours
  
• Work 30 minutes on my father's website.

I began the GMAT test around 1PM and got through the two 30-minute writing sections. Then Annie and I hit the mall. We returned around 8PM, and I managed to get another 30 minutes of the test in before my attention was lost forever. So I missed my daily goal, but hit my project goal, so I'll count this as a success.

Date: 2/19/07
Status: Success (based on original goals), Failure (based on the day's individual goal)
Project: GMAT prep
Time spent: ~90 minutes

Introduction

Hello readers! This blog is different from my other blog, "I'm Funny Once a Day", or IFOD. "I'm Productive Once a Day", or IPOD, is not intended to be funny. My goal is to post here daily.

What will I post? Well, here's the deal. I've struggled with being productive outside of a work or school environment since, oh, ever (I'll tell you the 3rd grade story later). I've tried financial incentives, social incentives, even flagelation... well not really. But the more I try, the more I end up playing Gears of War.

So gleaning some ideas from blogger Steve Pavlina and friends Eric and Brent, I've implemented a policy of modified time-boxing. Basically, my goal is to spend 30 minutes a day doing something productive. 

Now, let's define productive. First, here's what I do not include:

• Household chores (since they need to be done anyway)
  
• Work (because I am plenty productive at work and always have been)
• Anything I need to do (for example, taking the car to get an oil change, or calling Bank of America to dispute a charge on my credit card)
• Posting to this site.

Now, here's what I do include (N.B. this list is my current list):

• Working on my website/learning RoR and CSS
  
• Calling Microsoft to get my psuedo-broken XBox 360 fixed, and then shipping it to them
• Calling T-Mobile to negotiate a new contact where they give me lots of stuff
• Building a VBA app to create intelligent a fantasy baseball draft cheat sheet
• Studying for the GMAT
• Posting to IFOD

So, I will post my daily "productive" work here. Also, I will post various thoughts about being productive outside of work, and anything else. This blog is mostly for myself and my friends. Eventually I'll move this to my own site, but that may be a while.