Finally Friday! Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Although, to be quite fair, the actual days of the week mean little to me anymore. One of the joys of working from home is that you can make your own schedule.
Currently, my schedule consists of waking up around 3 pm, walking the dog and having coffee. Then, I start my day with my lists to see what I need to complete that day in writing. I will write client work and work on these blog posts and the weekly newsletter, then I will work on my personal projects (novels, scripts, read, etc.) and by 7 or 8 am I am ready for bed again.
Because of the light insomnia I have, there are a few weeks where the schedule is swapped, or I just stay up for a few straight days.
Not having a schedule written in stone really helps my mental state. But, it can wreak havoc on my productivity and performance.
When the ADD distraction becomes too often to focus, or when the insomnia prevents sleep at any hour of the day, I am thrown for a loop. Up until a few months ago, it would get so bad that my entire schedule suffered for a couple of weeks at a time.
I would find myself playing catch up, doing client work for 19 to 22 hours straight. Not working on my personal projects at all. And that got me thinking.
What if I had two or three schedules? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see where I am in my cycle and have a plan that adjusts with me? Of course it would!
And that brings us to today’s writing prompt. Let’s take a look.
June 11
Write down your current daily schedule. Try to include everything you do for 24 hours over the course of a week. Sleep, eating, working, self-care time. Write it all down. Then, imagine if something happened that caused your schedule to be turned upside down. You couldn’t sleep for 6 hours, you couldn’t eat at 6 pm on the dot. Your entire schedule became meaningless. Then, write a new schedule that would accommodate the holes or confusion that resulted form the old schedule failing.
We tend to get caught up in a daily routine and become near robot-like in carrying out our duties and responsibilities.
Oftentimes we even forget that something can (and eventually will) go wrong.
By creating these alternate schedules, you have something to fall back on. A mini-plan, as it were, of some sense of organization and productivity.
You can continue this out, too. Make a weekend schedule, a work-week schedule, even a schedule for when you take a vacation from work, or the kids.
THe more fall-back schedules you have, the less stress and more productive you will be. Knowing there is a plan when something goes wrong (even if it isn’t exact) is a lot better than going in blind.
Give it a try! Then let me know in the comment section what you think. Do you already have multiple schedules? How are they working for you?
