I am already speaking to the choir with this post, but an evergreen problem for humans is a lack of hitting goals (or even having any). These can be anything from weight goals, professional goals, personal goals, relationship goals etc.

For this post I want to focus specifically on goals that require time invested, things are under your control. Things you can do today, that compound into tomorrow.

Life gets in the way

Laziness, drinking with friends, Netflix, video games, etc. Most of these activities prevent us from tackling our objectives. These activities are meant to be consumed easily. It is a perfect storm. It’s very easy to go socialize & or play video games with your friends instead of sitting down and hammering out an essay, a movie script, a new product idea.

The solution I’ve found that works better than anything I’ve ever done so far is tracking your time. Although for me personally, that hurts to hear & write, it works very well & is an easy way to measure everything you do.

I’ll show you how I more than tripled my productivity towards my goals in a month using Google Sheets & the Pomodoro technique, and how you can literally do it right now yourself.

The Pomodoro technique

Insert the Pomodoro technique, the lifesaver. In the era of rampant ADHD, it’s very hard to sit down & focus. Many things are actively snatching your attention.

The Pomodoro gives you the chance to create your own attention. (Otherwise known as time boxing.) You’re deciding to have a singular focus for the duration.

Instead of saying “I’ll write some code today” it becomes “I will write code for the next n mins”.

This is generally followed by a 5 min break, which I find useful to clear my head and refocus. This break period helps you stay focused over longer sessions.

Pomodoro + Sheets/Excel

Insert Google Sheets. With Google Sheets you can track how many Pomodoros you complete.

I thought I had a great month of programming in November, but I’m sad to say that for the entire month I had only written a grand total of… 6 hours of code. It felt like I had done a lot, but the data showed the opposite.

Come December, armed with this knowledge, I more than doubled it my first week. By the end of December I had done 30+ hours of code—over 5× November. January started even hotter.

Take programming out of the equation. Use the sheet to track your reading goals, gym goals, nutritional goals. Track a unit of work completed (a gym session, a Pomodoro of reading, guitar practice, etc.).

I put a 1 on my sheets if I went to the gym that day.

I actually thought tracking things sucked at first. It felt over the top & like a lot of work. Adjusting was annoying for the first week. But it’s made me much more studious. At first I had a hard time programming for 1 hour straight. Now it’s normal to knock out 3+ hours a day. (I work a full-time sales job!)

The learning/goal-hitting process feels chaotic. But the more deliberate practice you do, the more deliberate practice you can do.

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius

I went from struggling to write code daily to looking forward to it. It gamified the process for me.

If you’ve had a hard time hitting your goals in the past, give time tracking a shot. Don’t overcomplicate it—track the essentials & move on.

Carlos