Been very productive in the last week. Planning an hour day is really paying off. I've been able to get all the random stuff of life taken care of very well. But its all the stuff that needs to be done, but is not really related to each other.
For example, cleaning up my room, exercising, working on another paper, filling out applications, doing errands, and just planning using FreeMind and making my life outline (basically just a calendar implemented as a mind map where I can manage long term goals with short term actions, like Steve does with Action Outline) and reading stuff.
But I noticed that I've started to feel negative in the last day or so, just kinda angry. Though at nothing (or everything if I let myself think verbally for an extended period see
Silent Thoughts ). And nothing seems to have caused it. But if I believe my model that I've hashed out, then its because, hehe... I've fragmented my hierarchy by blasting through all that unrelated stuff that needs to be done. Yes I feel good to myself that I've been able to make lots of progress on getting things taken care of. But following my schedule has made me go through constant
transistions(see transitions post) of doing something totally unrelated every 30 minutes or so. I've been able to keep up my motivation for doing them by constantly reminding myself of my highest level goals, reminding myself of how each of these activities links into my highest level goals, better described in these post,
How to stay better discipline?,
Sunnybayes' interpretation. This keeps each tasks that I need to do attached to the hierarchy that is the source of my motivation.
The motivation is there to plug through, but the negative mood needs to go away. So I can think of two ways to do this. Make myself do less transitions by sticking to one thing for like 5 hours or so until it is done, like Steve describes in Do It Now, or busting out with being in a state of higher concious. I'm going to try out the second way for the next several days to see if I can learn to deal better with constant change, and not be stress out (though I'm not really stressed, I just have a negative mood), and be in a positive mood.
If that does not work, then I'll just have to stick with one task longer until completion. Ultimately I'd think that sticking to one task would always be more productive, though in case I have a temporary job that forces me to juggle several unrelated things, then I'd know I could handle it this way.
But basically, the way I define being higher concious is actually pretty simple. Summed up in a sentence... just keeping focused on the feeling at the highest part of the hierarchy... inside my head feeling it is behind my eyes around my nose, and then behind that... then higher still, you are know you are doing it right if you feel like it pulls you out of the current situation. I should work on explaining this better.
I've also found some other sources on the internet that describe what I mean by linking goals to the hierarchy.