It’s 5 days now since I’ve released the new flow on Uptimeline, and I haven’t looked much at the data yet, and definitely haven’t thought about what the next step should be. And the reason is not that I don’t time, rather that I don’t have energy.
I’ve understood a while ago already that there is only so much work I can do in a day, and it doesn’t really matter how much time I work, rather how focused and motivated I am during that time. Some days I only work a few hours and I am far more productive than other days when I’m in front of the screen for 16 hours.
In the last few weeks I’ve been seeing a gradual degradation of my productivity, and this last week I’ve been having a real hard time forcing myself to work, and a very low desire of working. Which is usually not the case, I like my work, I’m usually excited to do it.
I forgot to mention, Uptimeline is not the only thing I’m working on, in fact it only gets marginal attention. Most of my time I spend on client work. I currently have a project that’s been ongoing for a month and needs delivered in January, and another big one which is starting now and requires my attention.
Which makes me wonder, am I on the verge of burnout? And if I am, is there anything I can do to prevent it? Normally I’d say I need to enjoy myself more, but I don’t think that applies this time. This month I’ve had 1 week of vacation, went on a road trip to Sofia from Bucharest with a special someone. Then I went to Malta for a week of remote working in the good weather. Now I’m spending time in Moldova with my grandparents. Definitely I’m not getting bored in my life, so making it more exciting is probably not the solution. What could I be missing?
Brainstorming solutions
Dumping some ideas:
- I’m getting bored with work, I could try making the work more challenging
- Maybe I need more goals and accountability. Actually, on client work this might be a good moment to work goal-based rather than time-based.
I think I’ll try them both, and report on this in the next days.
An update on full transparency
About being 100% transparent on the blog, I realised I can’t be for different reasons, mostly a matter of “public relations”. There are some things of my job which I just can’t make public (because I’m legally bound) and other which I don’t want to make public. The idea of 100% transparency sounded very cool, but I’m not gonna be able to implement it. Regardless, the idea still stands, I want to be more genuine than I’ve ever been on my online channels, and as transparent as reasonably possible.
By the way
I’m gonna try to stop listening to music while I work. Most music is pretty boring right now anyways. I guess that’s what happens when you listen to it for many hours everyday, you run out of stuff to listen to 😅 This was Claudia’s idea. Thanks Claudia 🤭
End of Day Update
I ended up having a pretty productive day, so I think I’ve figured it out. I’m missing an objective in my freelance work right now. That’s the problem. I’m pretty sure. Today I set an objective for the day and reached it, which kept me working.