An idea to improve productivity.

When I want to build a habit to blog or code regularly, I often make a commitment to myself like:

I will publish one blog post a week.

Or:

I will code for 20 minutes three nights a week.

And I inevitably fail after a few days.

Perhaps adding another section to these pledges will improve my success rate. I mentally read the previous goals as:

I will practice this habit every week without fail forever and ever until the end of time.

Which is crazy because that will never happen! Instead I’m going to be clearer in my targets by committing for a finite period or “season”. Something like:

I will publish one blog post a week for six weeks.

Or:

I will code for 20 minutes three nights a week until I have built an app *(see below).

My idea is that by committing to a task for a fixed timespan and having a break at the end will improve motivation and also avoid burnout. I call them seasons because it reminds me of TV seasons which have x episodes followed by a break. The only problem I can foresee is reliably restarting the next season after a rest and not having too long a pause between seasons.

* The app would be a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that would I would have defined features and functionality for. Once again, it helps to crystal clear in what you want to achieve.