I've never been good at planning. Not in a humble way — in an honest one. When something needed doing, I just went and did it. No schedule, no structure. Whatever was in front of me, that's where the energy went.
That worked fine until it didn't.
Here's the pattern I know too well. Things are going. I'm exercising, working on the project, feeling good. Two, three months of that — actual momentum. Then something hits. Work gets difficult, or I get sick, or the money gets tight and I'm suddenly opening three more things trying to cover expenses. And just like that, everything I was building gets put to the side. Not a decision — just a slow disappearance.
Three months ago I got sick. Three weeks of nothing. And the thing that pissed me off most wasn't being ill — it was what comes after. Getting back to the routine. Feeling how much you lost. Starting again from the beginning when you were already somewhere. That feeling. Every single time, same circle again.
Work stress does the same thing. If something goes wrong at the job or the side job, there's no clear thinking left. The thing I'm passionate about goes quiet. I stop looking at it. I stop looking at anything except whatever's making me miserable that week.
So yeah. That's been the problem.
Now there's a plan. Two to three hours a day — that's what I've got. The rest goes to the job, the side job, and to actually taking care of myself so the next time something hits, I don't lose three months recovering from three weeks.
AI is part of this. Not in a complicated way — just thinking out loud, organising what's already in my head into something I can actually follow. Calendar connected. Tasks mapped. Something that pulls me back when I drift.
Writing this down, I'm realising something. This — the act of writing it — is already the thinking. I'm figuring out what I need to do by saying it out loud.
And what I need to do is isolate the boxes.
Main job. Side job. The dream — what I'm building. And myself. Four boxes. The problem has always been that when one goes wrong, it spills into all the others and everything drowns together. That stops now. Each box gets its time, its space, its energy. They don't touch. And the dream — the thing I'm actually building — gets more of me than it ever has before.
Will I follow the plan perfectly? I have no fucking idea. I'll skip days. I'll go off track.
But it's written down. Publicly. And even if I skip it — I can come back to it.
That's new. That's the whole point.