If you read my last post you'll have seen my itemised account of exactly how I spent my time through the day. Now, today, I'll be analysing that. This was the whole point of the exercise - to examine how I'm using my time and check whether it's working well (I knew it wasn't) and how it can be improved.
The first thing to note about yesterday is that from the point of view of productivity, it was utterly pathetic. When I think of what a workhorse I used to be, I feel quite ashamed. Obviously, my time management needs some work. That's what we're doing here. So what I will be doing is working through the day, identifying what I see as the main problems, and devising ways to address them for a better result.
The first thing I notice is how the day begins. As the day starts, so the day will go - I've always believed that. So, starting it in such a lazy way, slopping around in my dressing gown and playing computer games, is far from ideal. Further, just for background, my working hours are supposed to be from 6 a.m. to 12. This may seem odd, but those hours had been working extremely well for me as they took advantage of my energy level which is highest in the early mornings. It's usual for me to wake at 4 or 5 in the morning, so historically, I could be all dressed and ready for the day before 6. My alarm goes off at 6 (6:15 on the weekend) but that is only a sort of failsafe; I expect to be up long before then.
I'll stress here that this was working really, really well for me until recently. Until Ferret died. When my poor boy was alive, I used to be up several times through the night for him, and often having to stay up for some time. This had gone on for years; sleeping through the night was just not a thing for me. Now, however, since he's been gone, I find myself sleeping right through the night more or less, and when the alarm goes I am still sleeping, and I'm slow to drag myself out and even hit snooze sometimes. So starting actual work at 6 is obviously not a thing. There's the first problem identified - my working hours no longer fit my lifestyle. I don't know whether, once I've caught up the massive sleep debt I probably incurred over the last three years, I might return to my established patterns, waking at four. I hope so, for there's nothing I like more than being up then, alone in a sleeping world. For now, though, I have to accept that it's not happening, and therefore I think the sensible thing is to change my hours.
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| My beautiful Ferret, in happier times. |
I have decided to try new hours in two sessions - 10 to 12 and 1 to 3. Yes, it's shorter than before, but four hours that I actually work is a hell of a lot better than six hours where I dick around.
This means I'll have roughly four hours in the morning before I start work, and I think it is not unreasonable to expect that during that time I accomplish the following:
Shower and get dressed
Walk the dog and do training
Do the day's housework
Have breakfast and wash up
Take my pills
Make the bed
Review my plan for the day.
So that's the solution to the first problem. Just this one change ought to make a big, big difference, and I'm tempted to stop here and re-evaluate. In fact, that's what I'll do. It's Friday today, so I'll have the weekend to shake down and see if I can fit all of those things into the four hours from six to ten. There will be something wrong, I think, if I can't, but then that would need to be addressed. There's never any point in trying to build on a foundation that's wobbly.
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