I’ve been paying very close attention to they way I work best. The time of day I get the most done is the morning. By around 2pm my brain is done, and sadly it doesn’t matter if I got started around 7am or 11am. I generally get a little spurt of energy in the early evening but that’s right about the time I get hounded with “What’s for dinner? When are we eating?”
So I’ve been trying to get to my desk as early as possible each day. I’ve tried a couple times to actually get out of bed earlier (typically I’m up by 7:30am on days I don’t need to wrassle a kid onto a bus) but the old night-owl in me can’t get the hang of an earlier bedtime and I need my beauty rest. The days I get going by 8am seem to be the most productive, so that’s what I’m shooting for.
For awhile I tried to schedule my days, work time, play time, learning time, family time. This does NOT work for me. On the days where I just let myself wander from task to task I seem to end up with more done. Take today, for example. I was at my computer by 7:30 or so. I read through and responded where necessary to the few emails that arrived overnight (because I was working late last night there weren’t many) and did a couple little coding bits for clients. I hopped on Facebook where I saw I was tagged in a photo from this past weekend, so I decided to go through my own photos and upload the ones I want to share. Meanwhile I have Twitter running so I’ve been chatting on and off with people there. Oh, and I just quickly scanned a training video which I’ll watch more in depth later.
Also I folded some laundry I washed yesterday.
Three hours later I’m writing a post to my blog, something I haven’t done often enough recently. When I’m done I’ll jump in the shower and head off to run some errands, knowing that I’m on top of what I need to be on top of. I’ll hop back on later this afternoon and take care of anything that’s cropped up. Now, today is little different because I’m in a holding pattern waiting for feedback from a lot of people, so I didn’t have any big blocks of work to do (that could change by this afternoon) but even when I do have a lot to do, doing it in spurts, following the shiny every once in awhile, then going back to work, seems to suit me best.
So I’m figuring out what works for me. Of course, I have the lovely freedom to schedule myself. I’ve always chafed at having to work within someone else’s time frame, but I hadn’t realized that it was the time frame itself, vs the someone else, that was getting in the way. Now that I understand, it’s actually easier for me to work with other people. Bonus!
Working with what works
I’ve been paying very close attention to they way I work best. The time of day I get the most done is the morning. By around 2pm my brain is done, and sadly it doesn’t matter if I got started around 7am or 11am. I generally get a little spurt of energy in the early evening but that’s right about the time I get hounded with “What’s for dinner? When are we eating?”
So I’ve been trying to get to my desk as early as possible each day. I’ve tried a couple times to actually get out of bed earlier (typically I’m up by 7:30am on days I don’t need to wrassle a kid onto a bus) but the old night-owl in me can’t get the hang of an earlier bedtime and I need my beauty rest. The days I get going by 8am seem to be the most productive, so that’s what I’m shooting for.
For awhile I tried to schedule my days, work time, play time, learning time, family time. This does NOT work for me. On the days where I just let myself wander from task to task I seem to end up with more done. Take today, for example. I was at my computer by 7:30 or so. I read through and responded where necessary to the few emails that arrived overnight (because I was working late last night there weren’t many) and did a couple little coding bits for clients. I hopped on Facebook where I saw I was tagged in a photo from this past weekend, so I decided to go through my own photos and upload the ones I want to share. Meanwhile I have Twitter running so I’ve been chatting on and off with people there. Oh, and I just quickly scanned a training video which I’ll watch more in depth later.
Also I folded some laundry I washed yesterday.
Three hours later I’m writing a post to my blog, something I haven’t done often enough recently. When I’m done I’ll jump in the shower and head off to run some errands, knowing that I’m on top of what I need to be on top of. I’ll hop back on later this afternoon and take care of anything that’s cropped up. Now, today is little different because I’m in a holding pattern waiting for feedback from a lot of people, so I didn’t have any big blocks of work to do (that could change by this afternoon) but even when I do have a lot to do, doing it in spurts, following the shiny every once in awhile, then going back to work, seems to suit me best.
So I’m figuring out what works for me. Of course, I have the lovely freedom to schedule myself. I’ve always chafed at having to work within someone else’s time frame, but I hadn’t realized that it was the time frame itself, vs the someone else, that was getting in the way. Now that I understand, it’s actually easier for me to work with other people. Bonus!