Finding Time ⏰
Hello friends!
Thanks for following my weekly updates! My goal is to summarize the various things I discover throughout each week and to provide you with useful information you can apply to your own maker skillset.
While revamping craigphares.com, those old posts sparked fond memories of how much fun I had sharing the cool things I found on the internet. I'm looking forward to starting this back up again on my new personal site, and with this newsletter.
This first email is all about time. ⏰
TLDR
Things I do to save time.
Meditate while brewing coffee (or tea)
Bullet Journal before starting work
Dedicate one hour/day to personal projects
Build reusable tools
All social on the phone, not the computer
Aggressively decline extra meetings & conference calls
Group required meetings & calls together
Separate creative work time & coding work time
If you don't have time for something, it's not a priority
Finding Time
Last year my wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. This year I turned 40. A month ago our 3rd child was born. Yesterday my oldest son started Kindergarten. Time is precious.
I've recently experimented with time-shifting my life. It's not easy. Since writing The Early Bird vs. The Night Owl I've returned to my old late-night routine. And now, with a one-month-old in the house, my internal clock is so confused that finding a cohesive block of time to do anything is a challenge.
Yet I've continued to carve out a minimum hour (more or less) each day to focus on personal work. It took 1 month from deciding I wanted to relaunch craigphares.com to actually shipping— when it should have taken 1 week. But it shipped. 🚀
I also managed to weave some side-project time into commercial work, expanding Icotar to include a more practical application for paying projects. If you use avatar placeholders, make sure to check out the new initials-as-a-service feature. Building open source projects that you personally use is a great way to advance your capabilities and to get your work in the eyes of the public. At Six Overground, Fridays are Friday Funday, where a focus on side-projects is encouraged.
One thing that has significantly helped this year is I started a Bullet Journal. I've consistently used it to prioritize my days. It's the first thing I do each morning after brewing some coffee (and meditating for 5 minutes). The start of each new month is a reminder to stay on track with my personal goals. I highly recommend this approach, and you can do it with any notebook.
Focus is also key to keep productivity up. My email inbox is always zero, which keeps my mental load uncluttered. I purposely keep social apps on my phone and off my computer to separate consumption from production. As much as possible I try to decline phone calls and meetings. A status call should often be replaced with a Slack message. I also try to block similar tasks together. Conference calls are scheduled back-to-back on the same day. I plan ahead to make sure only one side of my brain is busy at a time. Creative work is performed during one part of the day, and programming is scheduled for another.
Most of all, if I find I don't have time for something, I take a good hard look at it. There's usually a way to make time. If there's really no time, that means that other things in life are more of a priority, and that's okay. Accept this fact, and you'll find time for the things that matter.
How do you find time to work on side projects? Hit reply and let me know what you're working on. I'd love to hear what you think of this email, and what you'd like to see in future newsletters. Thanks for reading! 🙌
Time Hacks
Articles, tools, and tricks for time management.
Until next week,
Craig