I have two months and a half left until I can finally go home. I'll finish with work for this season and I can take a break. For a while, I'll finally have as much time as I want. I can't stop thinking about that.
The reason is that while I love a routine, like the one I have right now, I am also the type of person who quickly gets bored of things that are done for too long, so I always crave something new. If I play games for too long, I crave work. If I work for too long, I crave games. I watch too many movies, I want a TV show. I watch a TV show for too long, I want to watch movies. I play one genre of games, I want another. I play a new one, I crave the one I enjoyed before.
This makes it difficult for me to stick to one thing and allow small, daily progress to get me the result I want. I work on something, and I make progress little by little on a daily basis, but I also want to do other things. Sadly, time doesn't permit me to take on too many things, so I have to choose: either I stick with what I currently do because I want to finish what I started, or I begin doing something else, and I leave some of my previous work undone.
This thought makes me want to forget about consistent daily progress and to find a way in which I can get a lot done in a short amount of time. It would be so great if I could spend an entire day translating the comic I have and be done with it, or read one of the books I started and finish it within a few days so I can start a new one. The examples can keep going.
Such thoughts are normal, especially for people who aren't very patient, like me. You want things to move along, to get to the finish line faster. But sometimes, if you try to do that, you'll end up slowing things down and inviting chaos into your life, which might eventually lead you to abandon your work completely.
I know that this will happen if I try to finish one of the things that I do too quickly. I'll try to do one thing all at once and I will fail because I simply don't have the time. To even attempt that means that I have to give up on my daily reading, my daily Duolingo lesson, my daily nap during my break, which helps me work on the second half of the day, and so on.
This disruption in my routine will eventually feel so bad that it might make me abandon it completely. And when that happens, the consistent daily progress I had before will transform into no progress at all, which is obviously not something I want.
So, although I understand that a boost in progress would be great, it sometimes represents too much of a risk to our already established routine that keeps us going. Reading 20 pages a day from a book will eventually get us to 200 pages in 10 days. Then 300 in 15. 400 in 20. And so on. That's always better than reading 200 pages in a day, then not picking the book again for 2 months because your attempt at finishing it as quickly as possible didn't go as you would've wanted. The same idea can apply to pretty much everything you do.
This requires some knowledge about yourself, about the type of person you are and how you work best. In my case, a steady daily routine is, although boring and, at times, frustrating due to the lack of time to do anything else, overall a very good thing. It allows me to steadily move forward every day, which will eventually result in my goals being accomplished.
So, pick your preferred choice. For some, bursts of productivity can be good. But for a lot of other people, consistent, daily progress, even in small quantities, is the best way to go towards achieving a goal. Writing 5 sentences a day. Reading 10 pages a day. Studying for 30 minutes a day. And so on.
