24 Hour daily agenda (30 minute blocks)
This was from David Burns Feeling Good and I found it quite useful at various points. Basically:
1 Use a form or make your own spreadsheet with all 24 hours of the day covered but split up even further into 30 or 15 minute blocks. It also has a section to report what you scheduled vs what you ended up doing
2 Brainstorm all the things you need or would like to get done and give a time estimate for each based on how long its taken you ideally in the past
3 Schedule each item based on how much effort/complexity it requires (earlier = more complex/energy-intensive) and make sure the tasks are spaced so that there is enough time and a little buffer for breathing room (based on your durations)
Sorta looks like this, can't seem to find the original necessarily but you get the point
Very useful and practical tool
Please name the tool/exercise and limit to CBT for this thread (I want to cover and discover others in future topics focused on them). I really want to avoid boilerplate namedropping "this or that therapy but you'd have to pay to see a therapist, you wouldn't understand". That just not helpful, please elaborate Any pedantic replies not answering question won't be entertained
analog lists to cross off for more productivity.
i wrote out "pushupsx20" and then "1, 2, 3"....up to the number of days in the month.
same with "paintx20min", "running 1hr", and so on.
so I wrote out a list like that of 20 or so activities that I wanted to regularly get done and i cross off the 1, 2, 3 so on each time I completed one instance.
crossing off an item on the list is extremely satisfying, and it was fine to do like five sets of push-ups over the day and cross off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to get ahead of the schedule.
i didn't have to do 20 different activities everyday, but It's very fun to write a big x through a number and the goals themselves were modest enough that by the end of the month, everything was crossed off and I had done hundreds of pushups and situps I otherwise wouldn't have and paintings and focused on several hobbies that I usually didn't give enough attention to.
I also could look back at the sheet with all of this activity and marvel at how much i accomplished that month, that's pretty good.
it was a very productive method.