It’s the start of another busy period at work, and that means routine / process design and test time!
I’m one of those sorry souls who genuinely believe they’re always just one tweak away from optimal working practices, ‘mind like water‘ and generally going about their day like that scene in The Matrix where Neo dodges the bullets.
I like Kendra Adachi’s concept of ‘lazy geniusing‘ problems, especially her idea of deciding what matters about it to you and prioritising that. What matters to me most about the upcoming few weeks is two things: minimising the intensely stressful feeling that I’m not getting enough done, and feeling good physically.
To get there I’m going to try and employ these techniques:
- Time-blocking à la Cal Newport: blocking out at least one >90-minute session in the day, where Focus Mode gets turned on on my phone and I just do one thing until it’s done or the time runs out.
- No ambitious plans for my free time. Necessary admin, knitting, computer games and books only.
- Taking a proper lunch break with a walk and something green to eat.
- Going to bed by 10pm.
I went to a work-colleague’s leaving do last night and we tried to compare notes about books we’d read. I had little to contribute, sadly, because it has been a dismal year for reading so far – whereas in my most booksy year, 2009, I read 102 books, this year I’ve got 7 in the bag.
The first half of the Baby Year was great for reading because of all the breastfeeding, but the second half has been the slowest ever for reading. But it’s like Laura Vanderkam says – you have time for anything but not everything. There, now I’ve name-dropped every one of my productivity role models in this post.
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