Day 83: For me, working in the morning is a bust
I didn’t post yesterday since I would only be saying I was taking a personal day.
However, today was kind of a slog. As I mentioned the day before yesterday, an article mentioned not reading until after you do your writing work for the day because reading before writing might drain your creative energy. Since a lot of my reading is in the form of audiobooks while I’m walking, I decided to try walking in the afternoon instead of the morning, and to do my work in the morning.
I’d forgotten that when I wake up, I’m kind of brain-dead and don’t really wake up for about 2-3 hours. Today I went to my computer to write and just kind of stared at the screen, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing. The brain fog didn’t clear until almost lunchtime.
When I was doing biology work, I would always prepare my morning work the day before, and it was always mindless kinds of tasks like feeding cells or doing an assay I was used to doing. I couldn’t do things like calculations or statistical analysis until the afternoons.
The past few weeks, I’ve been walking first thing when I wake up, and I think the exercise helps clear away the brain fog, so I’m not quite as brain-dead after coming back from my walk. But since I didn’t walk today, I think that’s why it was so hard for me to write for the first few hours of the day.
I did some writing in the afternoon, but when my alarm went off to remind me to go walking, it was kind of jarring and interrupted my writing flow. That was kind of counter-productive.
And then when I went walking, I ended up having low blood sugar halfway through the walk and had to drag myself home. I’m not sure why, because I never have low blood sugar when I walk in the morning, which is often before I eat breakfast. I came back home with a headache that laid me low through dinner.
I talked over my problem with my husband, and while I know I ought to give this method of “not reading until after I do my work” a couple more days to try it out, I’m fairly certain it’s not going to work. I need that walk in the morning to help me wake up, and the alarm in the afternoon jolted me out of a good writing flow. (I’m going to assume the low blood sugar was a freak happening.) My husband said that I need to accommodate my own particular circadian rhythms and the way my brain works. So I think I’m going to continue to walk in the mornings, which means I’m going to be listening to audiobooks before I start work.
I again did dictation with my earbuds in and listening to my normal playlist, and it seems to work really well for me to help me get into flow state. I think I’ll continue to do that with my dictation.
Time spent writing: 37 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 36 minutes
My takeaway for today: I have to walk in the morning to help wake my brain up.
However, today was kind of a slog. As I mentioned the day before yesterday, an article mentioned not reading until after you do your writing work for the day because reading before writing might drain your creative energy. Since a lot of my reading is in the form of audiobooks while I’m walking, I decided to try walking in the afternoon instead of the morning, and to do my work in the morning.
I’d forgotten that when I wake up, I’m kind of brain-dead and don’t really wake up for about 2-3 hours. Today I went to my computer to write and just kind of stared at the screen, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing. The brain fog didn’t clear until almost lunchtime.
When I was doing biology work, I would always prepare my morning work the day before, and it was always mindless kinds of tasks like feeding cells or doing an assay I was used to doing. I couldn’t do things like calculations or statistical analysis until the afternoons.
The past few weeks, I’ve been walking first thing when I wake up, and I think the exercise helps clear away the brain fog, so I’m not quite as brain-dead after coming back from my walk. But since I didn’t walk today, I think that’s why it was so hard for me to write for the first few hours of the day.
I did some writing in the afternoon, but when my alarm went off to remind me to go walking, it was kind of jarring and interrupted my writing flow. That was kind of counter-productive.
And then when I went walking, I ended up having low blood sugar halfway through the walk and had to drag myself home. I’m not sure why, because I never have low blood sugar when I walk in the morning, which is often before I eat breakfast. I came back home with a headache that laid me low through dinner.
I talked over my problem with my husband, and while I know I ought to give this method of “not reading until after I do my work” a couple more days to try it out, I’m fairly certain it’s not going to work. I need that walk in the morning to help me wake up, and the alarm in the afternoon jolted me out of a good writing flow. (I’m going to assume the low blood sugar was a freak happening.) My husband said that I need to accommodate my own particular circadian rhythms and the way my brain works. So I think I’m going to continue to walk in the mornings, which means I’m going to be listening to audiobooks before I start work.
I again did dictation with my earbuds in and listening to my normal playlist, and it seems to work really well for me to help me get into flow state. I think I’ll continue to do that with my dictation.
Time spent writing: 37 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 36 minutes
My takeaway for today: I have to walk in the morning to help wake my brain up.
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