Origin

TL;DR: Project TTMS is only part of the solution to self-organization.

While I was pondering about Project TTMS, I realized that the whole point of an organizational system is to make the process of planning and organizing tasks as seamless as possible, such that I can maximize the amount of effective time (time spent actually doing the tasks). No matter how seamless my self-organizational system is, it doesn’t matter if I cannot actually execute my tasks efficiently.

In essence, the goal for both self-benchmarking and Project TTMS is to get as many things done as possible.

So, how do I get more things done?

Why Benchmark?

My first thought was simply tackling this as if I were an algorithm (the software kind). To optimize an algorithm, one usually does the following steps:

  1. Design the algorithm
  2. Test the algorithm
  3. Benchmark the algorithm
  4. Optimize the algorithm
  5. Repeat steps 2-4 until the desired outcome is achieved

Now, let’s adapt the steps above if we think about the algorithm being me executing tasks.

  1. Make me exist (DONE, you’re reading something I wrote, after all.)
  2. Test myself (DONE, because I’m capable of doing tasks.)
  3. Benchmark myself
  4. Optimize how I complete tasks
  5. Repeat 3-4 until the desired outcome is achieved

To summarize, the entire point of this thoughtbook is going to be about what I do to perform steps 3 and 4, but since benchmarking will take the bulk of the time, most of the posts will be focused on that.

Setting Limits

When it comes to benchmarking, I also need to set some ground rules/limits. I could hypothetically aim for the following:

flowchart LR
	1("Wake up")
	2("Do tasks")
	3("Sleep")
	1 --> 2
	2 --> 3
	3 --> 1

but I can already tell that is neither realistic (I’m not going to be benchmarking myself forever…) nor is it sustainable, as it leaves me super prone to burnout.

I eventually settled on the following:

  • I can only start benchmarking after completing my morning routines.
  • I can benchmark myself for 10 hours a day at most.
  • The benchmark can be stopped as long as it has taken place for at least 5 continuous hours.
  • Only one benchmark session can take place per day.

The Prerequisites of Benchmarking

In my opinion, any benchmark needs to have two prerequisites:

  • It needs to involve a metric that’s measurable.
  • It needs to be repeatable.

Measurability

The reason why a benchmark is useful for optimization (in general) is because it lets us figure out if a change positively impacted whatever we are optimizing.

Repeatability

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you think about it), humans aren’t exactly computers. We are much more unpredictable than computers, and there’s even a whole field called psychology for attempting to predict our unpredictable nature.

If we want to benchmark something, it’s very important that the benchmark is repeatable. If the results are all over the place, their significance is essentially useless.