Back in April I began the process of switching the Eureka Room website from Squarespace to WPEngine. My goal was just to reproduce the old site and I found a template that looked like it would do fine. Easy-peasy because the original site was (more or less) just one page.
But then I had trouble with the site’s main image. It looked fine on desktop, but on a phone it was the wrong size due to some weird cropping (or not cropping?).
Two hours later I figured it out.
And it wasn’t worth all the time I put into it.
On some level I was aware that I wasting time. On some level I knew this was important, but I could move on and I could ask a friend more experienced than me how to fix it. Likely it would take them less than a couple minutes to fix for me or tell me what to do. (In fact, it turns out the solution consisted of just one line of code and one setting).
The problem was that I had become enamored with this problem. It was challenging for me, but/and I knew it was doable. Plus, due to the visual nature of the issue, my reward would be able to actually see it go from looking bad to looking great.
So in some fog of ego+challenge+carrot I wasted two hours.
I even had predicted this might be an issue and I set my pomodoro stopwatch. But I let it keep right on ticking.
I need an alarm not a stopwatch next time.
Now two hours isn’t the end of the world, but it’s the bigger picture of self-regulation of behavior which is the thing that annoys me. Sometimes once you start eating some junk food and you just can’t stop eating junk food. It’s not good for you, you won’t feel well when you’re done, but your mind checks out and you just keep going. Ugh.
So my solution is going to be to set an alarm in the other room so that I have to get up and to turn it off.
I bought a cheap alarm that is easy to set and beeps annoyingly and I set it in another room, close enough to hear it but far enough to where I have to get out of my chair to turn it off. Once I have the momentum of moving in another room, I can more easily step back, take a break and reflect. When I reflect I basically ask, “Is what I’m doing the best thing for my goal?” The answer helps me make adjustments.
But what I really need is a loud annoying alarm that goes off in my house that I can not turn off unless I go outside and walk down to the park. Because sometimes I just go add 25 more minutes to the alarm in the other room and don’t reflect at all
I think an App would do it.
The Alarm Clock In The Park App
The Problem: You aren’t taking breaks. When you do, they are too short. You’re not getting away from the work to think. As a result of this lack of reflection, the quality and quantity of your work suffers.
Solution: An app and a really loud wireless speaker that can’t be unplugged or turned off.
How it works:
- User chooses a time that the alarm will sound, for example, 25 minutes. User chooses a geofence that their phone must enter into before the stupid annoying alarm turns off.
- User begins to do the tasks assigned for this time period.
- End the end of the time period, the alarm begins to go off. It is a terrible thing to listen to.
- The user must choose to put up with this annoying sound or to get their phone to the geofenced location, which will turn off the alarm.
I did a quick search for something like this, but did not find anything. Someone want to make it for me? 🙂