Dedication

Upon returning from the 2011 Google Analytics Partner Summit overwhelmed with the vast amount of knowledge I gained in just two short days, I became exponentially more overwhelmed on my first day back to the office. At that was necessary was to glance at my to-do list.

For the better part of my professional career, my daily to-do list has been my hydra. After every task that is struck from my list, at least two other tasks quickly find their spot on my notepad's ensuing lines. The pressure and weight of the tasks are crippling at times, bringing all productivity to a halt and causing a death spiral into online news sites and random articles across the web that are anything but my to-do list.

After several days of internal reflection and analysis that I was already thinking about on professional and personal items in my life (where my career is, where I want it to be, am I progressing to where I want to go?, am I balancing my work life with my home life?, and on and on), the stress of my to-do list was too much to handle. I decided something needed to change and that what would make the greatest positive impact on everything is dedication. And not just dedication to my to-do list at work, but an overarching dedication to every aspect of my life. More dedication to my family relationships. More dedication to helping my wife around the house. More dedication to training my dog. More dedication to writing this blog. More dedication to expanding my analytics knowledge. More dedication to sticking to a monthly household budget. More dedication to training for a Tough Mudder competition.

So with this post, I am publicly challenging myself to a higher daily amount of dedication, with the end result being increased productivity in everything I do (side question, is it still a public challenge if no-one reads this blog?). I am also performing a small research study on myself for the remainder of 2011. For the first 5-10 minutes at work each morning, I will be recording a number of variables that I believe factor into my daily productivity, things like 'did I exercise before work?', 'how many hours of sleep did I get the night before?', 'how many meetings do I have that day?', and so on. I will also be recording the number of major tasks on my to-do list in the morning and the number of completed tasks I was able to finish during the day. Once I have three months worth of data I will be analyzing the data to find any correlations between my daily activities or environmental surroundings and my productivity. Once collected and analyzed, I will be sharing the full results on this blog, and integrating these findings into my daily life.

Are you a recovering lifelong procrastinator? What have you changed or done to be more dedicated and productive in bettering yourself?