So, I decided to give this “roy trey farmer” thing a whirl a while back. Heard about it, can’t remember where, maybe some online forum or a chat. Sounded kind of grounded, you know? Like getting back to basics with managing tasks or projects. Thought, why not, let’s see what it’s all about.
Getting Started with It
First thing I did was try to figure out the actual steps. There wasn’t much solid info, honestly. Seemed like a mix of different ideas someone named Roy Trey Farmer might have talked about? Or maybe it was just a catchy name someone made up. Anyway, I pieced together what I thought it meant. Mostly involved breaking work down into really small bits, like planting seeds, and then switching focus often, like tending different parts of a farm.
So I got my notebook. Listed out my main project tasks. Then I broke them down into tiny, tiny pieces. Like, ridiculously small. Stuff I’d normally just do without thinking. Then I set a timer, maybe 20 minutes, worked on one tiny piece. Timer goes off, stop immediately, switch to a completely different tiny piece from another project area. Did this for a whole morning.
Where It Fell Apart for Me
Well, it felt incredibly disruptive. Here’s what went wrong:
- Constant switching: Man, switching gears every 20 minutes? Brutal. Just when I felt like I was getting into something, making progress, ding! Time to stop and pick up something totally unrelated. Killed my flow completely.
- Tiny tasks felt silly: Breaking things down that small meant tons of overhead just managing the list. Felt like I spent more time looking at the list and switching than actually doing solid work.
- No room for deep work: Forget about tackling anything complex. You can’t solve a tricky coding bug or think through a complex strategy in 20-minute bursts scattered across different topics. Just doesn’t happen.
- What “farmer” part? I never really got the farming connection. Maybe it’s about patience? Didn’t feel patient, felt frantic switching all the time.
Honestly, it was a mess. My productivity actually dropped that week. I felt busy, sure, lots of checkmarks on tiny tasks, but the big picture stuff? Didn’t move forward much at all. It felt like running in circles.
Moving On
After about a week and a half of really trying to make it fit, I just stopped. Pulled the plug. Went back to my usual way – longer blocks of focus, letting the tasks dictate the time, not some arbitrary timer based on a vague concept.
It reminded me of some other systems I’ve tried over the years. They sound great in a blog post or a book, very neat and tidy. But real work, especially creative or technical stuff, is messy. It doesn’t always fit into neat little boxes or time slots. Sometimes you need three hours straight, sometimes just ten minutes.
So, yeah. The “roy trey farmer” experiment? Didn’t work out for me. Maybe it works for someone else, different kind of work perhaps. But for what I do, it was just another system I tried and tossed aside. Back to basics, my basics, not someone else’s idea of them.
