I take neither pride nor shame in admitting that I'm a Type A personality. It's just a fact — obvious to the people around me, neither good nor bad, simply a fact. A by-product of this is my need for everything in my life to be organized.
It was less evident a few years ago when most of my schedule revolved around school and extracurriculars that had fixed timings and didn’t involve a lot of decisions on my part.
But since leaving for university, I’ve had to manage my days on my own.
In the beginning, I tried sticking to the university timetable. It worked for the first few months, but quickly after that I realized that wasn’t going to. I’d briefly enrolled in another software engineering school, and in the following year my university workload was overwhelming, juggling more courses from outside my year than within it. Nothing short of Hermione Granger’s time-turner could have kept me on track with the university’s schedule, and I soon realized that lectures were a waste of time when I had access to the recordings (rewatching them at 2x speed was far more efficient) and slides anyway.
My room at the time was constantly cluttered with to-do lists everywhere. It worked mostly, but it had its drawbacks. For one, just because just writing something down wasn’t enough to ensure that it would get done when I wanted it to, and under the illusion that I’d somehow magically be able to actually finish what I planned each day, I grossly over-stuffed my timetable.
Initially, not meeting my expectations was frustrating. But over time, I came to accept that I probably wouldn’t get everything done, no matter how hard I tried. The problem, though, was that even when I knew to expect this, each night would end with me rescheduling tasks and feeling disappointed.
Still, the idea of not having a plan for the next day was too vague — it would result in me doing nothing at all.
I later noticed that although the morning hours were my most productive, I wasn’t using them to get much work done because I’d overestimate my own productivity and procrastinate even starting the day’s tasks. Then at night I wouldn’t be able to focus anymore, and because I’d have classes in the morning, I’d end up going to bed with my to-do list staring disappointedly at me yet again.
I didn’t actually find the fix while I was still at university. It came a few months after, when I was self-employed and had even less structure in my life.
One day, finally, I made the switch from to-do lists to Notion calendar. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t think of using Google Calendar for this before. It would have done the job just fine, but I was already happily using Notion for notetaking and so when I got the announcement that they launched their calendar feature, I gave it a shot. (This isn’t an ad either by the way, but if someone from Notion is reading this and wants to buy me a coffee, feel free.)
With this change, I started scheduling tasks in blocks of time, rather than just by name. This meant I had to estimate how long each task would take, and in turn the time at which I’d have to start my day in order to get everything done.
I immediately saw my productivity hike.
Although I’m still prone to overplanning out of my greed to get more done, I’m able to organize my time much more effectively and accomplish far more than I did before.
I checked my Notion Calendar history, and it turns out I started using it in March 2024. And since then, I’ve used it religiously, practically every day… until this trip.
The point of all this is that this trip has broken a habit I’ve had for many months.
I thought I was hooked on my productivity fix for life. But there it went, without a second thought, and I didn’t lose my mind over it.
This person — who has the habit of checking her calendar every 30 minutes to see what she has to do next — got so caught up that she didn’t even think about it for several days straight.
With how spontaneous everything is in such an unfamiliar environment, it just wasn’t feasible to.
And somehow, I survived.
I’m sure I’ll go back to it when I’m next in a situation where it serves my needs. But I’m definitely better off without it for now, and it’s fun to loosen my Type-A just a little bit and embrace the unplanned.