Setting time to do things

I've been finding it hard to do things that "I know I should, but never get around to," its like eating vegetables that you don't like, you know that you should but don't want to (though I never really had that kind of problem as a kid). Though I have been finding that there are many things that I should be doing periodically that I don't. Some of them include, studying Japanese, working out, cleaning the room (more frequently), throwing out things that I don't need and working on small projects. The biggest culprit when it comes to not getting around to what I should is distractions: mainly keeping up on news, games and watching online videos to name a few.

One thing I started doing is putting myself on a timer and setting a block of time to do something productive. The productive activity of today was working out, as I set up a timer to work out for 45 minutes before doing anything else. Attending to any distraction during this period of time was strictly forbidden.

The interesting result was that the usual upper body exercise that would take 1 hour to complete, was done in under 45 minutes, a 25% savings in time. I do believe that there are many places over the course of the day where distractions kick in and whittle away precious productive time where I should be getting things done. As an added bonus, I also managed to get the laundry done, ordered some music to send to Canada for a friend and made time to catch up with 2~3 people that contacted me that I didn't get back to this evening. Forcing myself to be productive during a specific period of time has been quite fruitful this time.

I think this effect is the result of committing to being productive during a period of time or outlining what exactly what you want to do during a specific period of time that improves productivity. There have been times back in high school where I've been really productive when classes were based around the period system-- I used to strive to get as much work done at school so I'd have less homework when the day was over. Perhaps I am seeing a similar effect here.