I may be in a sort of unique position that my job eats up 100% of my time when I’m out of town but provides me with quite a few days off in return. Like currently… seven weeks of days off.

This has been a common theme during my years of cruise ship and contract life too, so to not just turn into a useless slug that binge watches TV, I try to set some goals and put some order to my days.

I recently read a great post from the Apex Money collection called How I Got More Done, Reduced Stress, Increased Focus, and Mastered Time Management in 10 Minutes A Day.

I also reminded me a little of J. Money’s post over at Budgets are Sexy about What I Learned Working Like Benjamin Franklin For a Week.

Apparently, schedules work.

The Benny Franklin one is like super regimented but the dude got a lot done.

I already know I get a lot more done when I plan ahead. I am totally a set my clothes out, make my lunch the night before person.

So, I decided to experiment with one week of trying to schedule my down time so I can be more productive. I’m taking 10 minutes each night to map out how I want the following day to go.

Day 1

Last night I spent 10 minutes and sketched out this schedule.

Solid start… I didn’t set an alarm clock. I’m no worried when I wake up though since I pretty much always get up between 8-8:30 AM on my own, if I wasn’t out super late the night before.

Not today though, of course. It’s 9 AM. The plan is ruined.

I attempt to restart the schedule. It doesn’t happen. The day actually went like this:

Everything in me rejects the notion of scheduling every minute right now.

This is partially hilarious because at my regular job, I absolutely do schedule every minute.

Maybe that’s why? Apparently freelance Mel rejects this deep down in her soul.

Maybe if I spend the first 10 minutes of the day trying to schedule it instead of forcing the previous night’s plans on myself?

Day 2

A little more on track? At any rate, the day started on track.

Here was the original plan I sketched out after getting up:

Here is what happened. I derailed the whole thing when setting up QuickBooks took way longer than anticipated.

Then I also remembered Tuesday is the worst day at the gym because of all day swim lessons and I’ve been 3 days in a row, so skipping a day is no big deal.

The day fell apart again.

Day 3

I scheduled it to look like this:

This happened:

I do not like this system. We’re done here.

I did learn a few things though.

If you need to be at maximum productivity, it’s great to schedule out every minute of the day. I do it for work all the time:

But in reality, you don’t need to be at maximum productivity every second of every day. Eff that.

If it’s ain’t broke, don’t fix it. My old system of just a to-do list that I tackle when I feel like it through the day works way better for me.

I split it between things I have to do and things I’d like to get done. To be fair, most of life at this moment is just stuff I’d like to get done.

Then I do as much of it as I feel like.

I also feel like I was pushing myself to schedule in things I knew I should do, but didn’t really feel like doing – and didn’t really matter if they got done.

I should be better at reading my Bible, but until I make my whole brain get fully onboard with “this is how we start our days” I can put it on 8,000 to do lists and it’s still not getting done.

I have had get better at making macarons on my to do list for, oh, six years? I’m not sure why I thought Tuesday would suddenly be the day.

Mindset matters way more than any list or schedule.

The one take away I found was a by product of this experiment though. I do currently spend arguably a little too much time binge watching iZombie. (Though I’m also in the middle of three weeks of totally nothing to do because I was supposed to be on a European cruise that fell through…. so the boredom is real.)

I wouldn’t hurt to have a secondary to do list of one-off things that I can fill into the boredom gaps, sort of like my summer bucket list.

So, if it’s imperative you get sh*t done, yes, a minute by minute schedule of the day, that you largely stick to, can work wonders.

If that’s not completely necessary, a loose goal based list works way better for me.

What productivity methods do you use?