Don't wait for boredom before you check. For me, it's declaring something as priority for the day that otherwise wouldn't have made the cut at all. If I don't get to something, I put a line through it and write down what I did instead.
For this week, the list has
Code Complete - Chapter 4
Brain Bugs - Chapter 2
Don't Make Me Think (reread)
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chapter 1 + 2,
Economist + Web presence
(read economist, write/email/etc deliberate internet stuff)
For the most part, this stuff happens after the kiddo is in bed, but before I sit down to watch something with the Mrs, or tuck into fiction/games/etc. Everyone's schedule is different, but everyone has some time they could be spending a bit more carefully.
Meant to get to Chapter 4 of Code Complete last week, but we wound up with a kid free weekend (thanks Grandma), so I took the Mrs. to dinner instead, and we followed up with GOG (1954).
Easy to burn out quickly if you're switched on and going at it all the time. Just as easy to let all of the extras fall off the edge while you're floating through seasons of whatever HBO's current thing is. There's not a line where activities are either relaxing or productive, it's a grey area, for sure. Need to find the right balance.
After a single week of using a physical daily planner, I realized I'd accomplished more in the previous week than I had in the past 6 months. No looking back.
Every Sunday I write down a single thing to accomplish for each day of the next week:
Read a chapter of a book,
Write a post about a specific topic,
etc.
Procrastination is super dangerous when there isn't a deadline. Way too easy for "tomorrow" to turn into never. Professional/Personal development stuff seems to fall into that trap pretty frequently.
I tried tracking things with all sorts of different software, but nothing clicked for me like pen and paper.
(Field Notes 56-Week planner pairs well with a uni-ball 307 Gel Pen.)
Grain of salt / what works for others won't work for you / etc.
Don't leap back to school without carefully vetting whatever program has caught your attention. A lot of hoop jumping, and a lot of curriculum that's a decade out of date (or more) out there these days. I've tried to go back a few times, and it's been a complete waste of time/money.
Read Pressfield's "The War of Art." It's cheap, it's short, and it's helpful. There are a few passages that don't quit hit home, but it does one thing really well. It gives you the kind of internal vocabulary you need to get out of the "I'll do it tomorrow" sort of procrastination. "Tomorrow" is really dangerous thinking when there's not an actual deadline. You'll be saying tomorrow for years at a time, without actually moving the needle.
Move the needle every day. Do -something- that counts as forward progress. Momentum goes a long way. Track what you're doing. "What gets measured gets improved" sort of thing.
Be honest with yourself. What have you done that makes you think you should be more than just another office peon? Put in the work. Stop wishing. Earn it.
This tldr isn't very accurate. And the article isn't really that long. Worth the 20-something paragraphs of time.
But, to offer a slightly better summary:
Voltaire earned ~ half a million livres over about a year after discovering a broken lottery with a mathematician friend. The guy in charge of the lottery was fired, and the lottery was cancelled.
Voltaire used that money for additional investments, substantially increasing his wealth and allowing him to freely pursue his writing.
The mathematician used his winnings to fund scientific research and expeditions.
Directly from the article: "As he later observed, “If you want to make a fortune in this country, it is enough to read the king’s orders-in-council.” In other words, if you want to get lucky, read the small print."
If you write every day, and you've been published at a pro-rate previously, you most likely have something near-publishable in your trunk.
Obviously, the publisher needs to be discerning in what he actually buys. But if you're a writer trying to build a relationship with a new publication, I don't see any problem recycling work that didn't quite hit with some of the established markets.
If you're unpublished, or you've only been paid lower rates, you probably shouldn't be asking the question "Why should I submit here when I can submit to XYZ?" You should just tack the new publisher onto the end of the list, and when you've worked your story through the others, drop it here before it hits the trunk.
If you're writing a lot, it's not a risk. You've got something sitting in a folder that you haven't touched in five years. Blow the dust off, polish the edges, and maybe you make a couple bucks.
Lining up those SFWA ducks will be important. At that point, even as a new publication, if they're easy to work with, they'll quickly become a great second or third stop for fresh stories. They won't get first submissions for awhile, because you can't compete with Terraform's (and others') 25c/word rate. But that's okay. Gems fall through the cracks. Loads of great fiction out there looking for a home.
Your math is a little off, but you should seriously consider brushing up a bit and writing. SFF (and speculative fiction as a whole) has a diversity problem.
For a company that matches employees to employers, this is a pretty brilliant passive way of saying "Hey, look at how unexciting or terrible your job is, we can help!"
Personally, I was neutral across the board. Instantly had me thinking "should I be poking around for a new gig?", even if responsibilities/life make that somewhat unpractical.
So, you think inability to focus is the cause of your interests running "hot and cold"?
On medication (assuming some kind of CNS stimulant?) do you find that you're less prone to get excited about new things, and spend more time on things you're already invested in?
For me, it's really easy to get excited about new things. I throw a lot of stuff at the wall. Some of it sticks, most of it doesn't. But the more things that manage to find their way into my interests, the less time I have to focus on any single one of them.
I've been able to work around this to a certain extent with some pretty strict scheduling, but no matter what I'm working on, there's always a piece of me that REALLY wants to be focusing on something else.