Comments on: How to Unschedule your work and enjoy guilt-free play

By: AgentSully

AgentSully — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:55:05 +0000

MMMmmmm! Love this! Glad to read it! Thanks!

By: latesleeper

latesleeper — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:07:09 +0000

Dude… you sleep at 10pm? wuss..

By: Abdul Rahman

Abdul Rahman — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:13:34 +0000

So Chanpory, have you finished reading The Now Habit? ;)

By: Matthew Cornell

Matthew Cornell — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:20:00 +0000

Thanks for the summary! I’ve got to read it…

By: Dinu

Dinu — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:15:21 +0000

When I saw the title I thought this was another ideological zen type of post. But reading through, it’s actually quite a refreshing view of the typical work week. I have the same problem of procrastination, so I’m going to try the un-schedule as well.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:22:48 +0000

I got this book from my brother. We've found it to be really helpful, it's basically reverse psychology. The only thing you schedule is time OFF. I find that simply knowing that at X time I'll be at the gym, or going to the park, or doing something relaxing, it helps me value the time that I DO have to focus on something.

It's just a technique, and it seems to work, without going too much into 'feelings' or psychoanalysis (and I'm not against psychoanalysis at all). The Unschedule is focused on taking actions to change perceptions of work. I can't recommend it enough.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:32:52 +0000

Chanpory, yes, I saw Merlin's post after I read yours; and I get how spending more time organizing than doing can be negative, but the more I've been thinking about it, the more I kind of love the idea of super-organizing one's leisure time. It's so humanist and lovely to think that someone could call me up and say, "hey, can we have a meeting at this time about such and such" and I could legitimately check my calendar and reply, "That's actually not going to work for me, I'm going to be staring blankly at my book shelf and drinking some wine right about then."

As you say: Legitimizing play is good. ;-)

By: Chanpory

Chanpory — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:13:51 +0000

@Matthew, I haven’t quite how figured out how to integrate this into a GTD system, but I agree there’s a potential to become married to calendar. You could end up spending more time working on the calendar than actually doing work (a form of procrastination in itself).

Whats important about the Unschedule calendar is being able to visualize your entire day and to realize that your work day can be broken up into manageable chunkcs. More important, it helps you to legitimize your leisure time. Playing is good!.

Merlin from 43 Folders has some reservations about the Unschedule:

http://www.43folders.com/2007/10/04/procrastination-unschedule

If you do use the Unschedule, he suggests just doing it for one day, “just to get back on track.”

By: Bunk

Bunk — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:17:01 +0000

#4 Is so valuable. Rewarding yourself for a nice effort of work over a duration of months begins to become habit when done properly. You will find yourself accepting of "reward time" for every job well done, which will only cause you to elevate your work performance.

Great post!

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:07:13 +0000

Ah, I guess I did misread it or got it confused with something I read in the post that brought me here in the first place. I agree that scheduling anything shorter than 30 minutes is a mistake. I didn't realize anyone recommended doing that. Scheduling 10-15 minute processes make no sense.

Anyway, I definitely need to get better about scheduling my "fun" time and sticking to it, because it often intrudes upon work time, unsurprisingly when I'm most in need of focusing on a big task.