The Unschedule asks you to commit to starting for 30 minutes. What you accomplished is less important than the fact that you got started. These ideally are uninterrupted blocks of 30 minutes.
There are two ways it builds your confidence:
- You get immediate and frequent rewards following short periods of work, rather than putting off rewards to an uncertain future.
- You get a record of how much quality work you are doing, and can look at it for patterns for improvement.
You must:
- Not work more than 20 hours per week on your project
- Not work more than 5 hours a day on it
- Must exercise or play for at least one hour a day
- Must take at least one day off a week from your project
- Target a minimum of a 30 minute start
- Accept an imperfect first effort
- Start small
You schedule your recreation time, not your project. You also schedule other mandatory things (breakfast, chores, etc). By limiting the time slots when you can do work, you subconsciously desire to do the work.
There are eleven guidelines in his book. He recommends trying them and sticking to them for at least two weeks before customizing.
11 guidelines:
Schedule only:
- Previously committed time such as meals, sleep, meetings, etc
- Free time, recreation/leisure
- Socializing
- Health activities (e.g. exercise)
- Routine events like work commute, classes, etc
Fill your Unschedule with as many nonwork activities as possible. Do not schedule any work.
Add your actual work to the calendar only if you have completed at least 30 minutes in that session. If you did less, do not list it in the Uncalendar.
When tallying time worked, count only those that were at least 30 minutes.
Reward yourself with a break or a change to a more enjoyable task after each period worked (if it exceeded 30 minutes, I presume).
Keep track of the number of quality hours worked each day and each week. Total them up.
Always leave at least one full day for recreation and chores.
Before deciding to do any recreational activity or social commitment, try to work for just 30 minutes on your project.
Focus on starting, not on finishing.
Think small. Do not aim to complete something that will take more than 30 minutes (OK if you do complete it, of course). The goal is 30 minutes of dedicated work.
Keep starting.
Never end “down”. If you’re in the middle of a challenge, try to complete the challenge before you cease working. You want an easy, unambiguous task to resume with for your next start. Having an uncertain challenge makes it harder to start, and you will tend to procrastinate.
Make the Unschedule be the full 24 hours in the day. Leave space on the paper for the total tally.
Try to use different colors for different activities, so you can see patterns easily.
After a few weeks, look for patterns. If you have a procrastination log, cross compare. You may get an idea of best times to work, bottlenecks, etc. As an example, he noted that people who aim to do 8 hours of quality work often have a slump later on - indicating it is not sustainable.
Things he’s noticed/learned by using it:
- People are busier than they realize. Recreation + chores + socializing + exercise can consume a lot of time. You may have to start prioritizing, working early, delegating, etc.
- Some days are more productive than others.
- Some days are fairly busy, and you probably can’t expect to get 5 hours done. Heck, some days will be challenging to get anything done. If this happens, it is key that you enjoy the non-work time! Free yourself from guilt when doing those - the lack of guilt will make it easier to start the next day.
Benefits of the Unschedule:
- Realistic timekeeping
- 30 minutes of quality time working. This happens because you are focused on starting instead of accomplishing.
- Experiencing success (seeing the work you do get done, getting rewards after blocks of work, etc)
- Self imposed deadlines: You set the deadlines, not someone else.
- Newfound free time to do work: If some scheduled activity (chore, social or recreation) gets canceled due to outside forces, you can happily think “Ah, now I can work on my project!”