Mistaking movement for progress is very easy.I always wondered how did the day get over so fast.
There were times when a week would go by and I would feel no progress was made when trying to evaluate what was done in that time.
I wanted to fix this, so I decided to use a stopwatch and then evaluate how much time was spent on tasks.
The result was interesting, every time I felt stuck somewhere in my work, I would get distracted by apps and notifications, then end up browsing Instagram till the images started to seem old, escaping work for a short while felt nice, but over time this started to become a habit, a bad one.
Now when I get stuck or don’t feel like doing any work I would find a way to escape. Which did a big damage to my productivity.
I realized that when I browse apps and the web, the feeling of time would fade and interacting with a touchscreen seemed like movement, the further I scrolled, the more progress I had made, or at least I felt that way.
But by the end of the day, it was not real progress.
A better way to say it; you could move a lot on a road and yet not reach anywhere.
The feeling of busyness is what made the hour seem productive, but at end of the day, nothing was accomplished.
I am writing this so it reminds me constantly that it is out there and I need to stop.
