Day 352: Late start, clearing the decks
I once again got a late start for today. I stayed up too late last night reading (again!) because it happened to be a really good book. But my body must have also needed the rest because I slept a little longer than normal.
I’ve been following a more detailed schedule for my day, since that was suggested by the Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World book, and I’ve found that it helps me to know where my time goes. It takes me about 3 hours from when I wake up to the moment I sit down at my desk, and I was wondering if I waste time somewhere. But when I use my schedule, I can see what I do and (in general) how much time it takes me, and it really does take me 3 hours to get up (hygiene ritual), exercise, eat breakfast, and do the house chores scheduled for that day. Sometimes I have to do some cooking as prep for dinner, which usually takes an extra half hour. Then once I sit at my desk, I’ve been doing an hour of my Japanese flashcards before work, so that I can be sure to actually do them that day, since I know that my Japanese is like my exercise—if I don’t do it first, it won’t get done before the end of the day. So then it’s about 4 hours since I woke up before I start working.
This is all part of my clearing the decks before work, and it seems to take a long time, but with the detailed schedule, I’ve been seeing that it really does take that long. It dismayed me a bit, but then again they’re all important things in my life. I can’t not do daily hygiene (I’m too much of a former biologist for that to fly), and the house chores and cooking are my responsibility since my husband is the primary breadwinner. The exercise is vital for my health, especially since I sit at my desk all day, and the Japanese is an important part of my personal life goal, which is tied to my desire to write for Japanese women.
I don’t like that I got a late start to the day again. Sure, I can just go to bed later, but getting up earlier and getting everything done on clearing the decks earlier in the day somehow makes me feel like I have more energy. Which is really weird because I usually get energized late at night, not early in the morning. I guess I’m just changing as I get older.
So I really need to focus more on going to bed on time so I can wake up earlier. I think I need to put more effort into that. I had disabled my alarm to remind me to go to bed, but I think I will reenable that, and then gradually dial back my bedtime until it’s where I want it to be. That might be the only way for me to have the discipline to go to bed on time. I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to learn the discipline to do anything if I didn’t have alarms on my phone to remind me.
Today I’m continuing to read through my Regency novels and do light editing at the same time. I’ve noticed that I wasn’t terribly concise—likely because I was doing vomit writing for much of it. Some parts were still a bit rambling even though I know I edited it. Even though I did my best with the self-editing, I probably just had too much to fix. I wasn’t able to spot everything that could have been fixed since there were so many other things that needed to be fixed at the same time, and so wasn’t as thorough as I could have been. So I’ve been doing some minor cleaning up of sentences, and also splitting some longer sentences into shorter ones for better reading rhythm. I think the shorter sentences are because I’ve been influenced by another audiobook I was listening to, Several Short Sentences About Writing. (The writing style bothered me but I really liked some of the concepts, since they were mostly kind of new to me, so I might go back to listening to that again.)
I hope I can finish reading/editing the books quickly—I’m starting to get excited about writing book 4. I’m especially interested in seeing how my writing is when I try my new slower, more deliberate, editing-as-I-go writing style that I used with the Hawaii book. Will my writing speed be just as slow as the Hawaii book? I think my writing will continue to be a little better quality than vomit writing, and probably more concise since I’ll be editing more thoroughly as I write. Then when I do a final self-editing pass, there won’t be quite as much for me to edit, and I’ll be able to do a more thorough job since I’ll be able to spot smaller detailed things to fix.
***
I finished reading through book 1 in the series! I was really surprised how much I enjoyed reading that. I also went ahead and compiled an updated interior .pdf file and .epub file, then uploaded that to KDP.
Then I started directly into book 2 in the series and actually got through several scenes. I thought about continuing, but then I felt like I hit a wall, energy wise, and decided to stop for the day. Especially since I had decided earlier today to try to get to bed early. I also haven’t gotten up to walk enough today, so my back is hurting me a bit.
I’ll continue reading book 2 tomorrow!
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 4 hours, 14 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 15 minutes
My takeaway for today: Focus on getting to bed earlier since I seem to feel more energy earlier in the day than later these days.
I’ve been following a more detailed schedule for my day, since that was suggested by the Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World book, and I’ve found that it helps me to know where my time goes. It takes me about 3 hours from when I wake up to the moment I sit down at my desk, and I was wondering if I waste time somewhere. But when I use my schedule, I can see what I do and (in general) how much time it takes me, and it really does take me 3 hours to get up (hygiene ritual), exercise, eat breakfast, and do the house chores scheduled for that day. Sometimes I have to do some cooking as prep for dinner, which usually takes an extra half hour. Then once I sit at my desk, I’ve been doing an hour of my Japanese flashcards before work, so that I can be sure to actually do them that day, since I know that my Japanese is like my exercise—if I don’t do it first, it won’t get done before the end of the day. So then it’s about 4 hours since I woke up before I start working.
This is all part of my clearing the decks before work, and it seems to take a long time, but with the detailed schedule, I’ve been seeing that it really does take that long. It dismayed me a bit, but then again they’re all important things in my life. I can’t not do daily hygiene (I’m too much of a former biologist for that to fly), and the house chores and cooking are my responsibility since my husband is the primary breadwinner. The exercise is vital for my health, especially since I sit at my desk all day, and the Japanese is an important part of my personal life goal, which is tied to my desire to write for Japanese women.
I don’t like that I got a late start to the day again. Sure, I can just go to bed later, but getting up earlier and getting everything done on clearing the decks earlier in the day somehow makes me feel like I have more energy. Which is really weird because I usually get energized late at night, not early in the morning. I guess I’m just changing as I get older.
So I really need to focus more on going to bed on time so I can wake up earlier. I think I need to put more effort into that. I had disabled my alarm to remind me to go to bed, but I think I will reenable that, and then gradually dial back my bedtime until it’s where I want it to be. That might be the only way for me to have the discipline to go to bed on time. I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to learn the discipline to do anything if I didn’t have alarms on my phone to remind me.
Today I’m continuing to read through my Regency novels and do light editing at the same time. I’ve noticed that I wasn’t terribly concise—likely because I was doing vomit writing for much of it. Some parts were still a bit rambling even though I know I edited it. Even though I did my best with the self-editing, I probably just had too much to fix. I wasn’t able to spot everything that could have been fixed since there were so many other things that needed to be fixed at the same time, and so wasn’t as thorough as I could have been. So I’ve been doing some minor cleaning up of sentences, and also splitting some longer sentences into shorter ones for better reading rhythm. I think the shorter sentences are because I’ve been influenced by another audiobook I was listening to, Several Short Sentences About Writing. (The writing style bothered me but I really liked some of the concepts, since they were mostly kind of new to me, so I might go back to listening to that again.)
I hope I can finish reading/editing the books quickly—I’m starting to get excited about writing book 4. I’m especially interested in seeing how my writing is when I try my new slower, more deliberate, editing-as-I-go writing style that I used with the Hawaii book. Will my writing speed be just as slow as the Hawaii book? I think my writing will continue to be a little better quality than vomit writing, and probably more concise since I’ll be editing more thoroughly as I write. Then when I do a final self-editing pass, there won’t be quite as much for me to edit, and I’ll be able to do a more thorough job since I’ll be able to spot smaller detailed things to fix.
***
I finished reading through book 1 in the series! I was really surprised how much I enjoyed reading that. I also went ahead and compiled an updated interior .pdf file and .epub file, then uploaded that to KDP.
Then I started directly into book 2 in the series and actually got through several scenes. I thought about continuing, but then I felt like I hit a wall, energy wise, and decided to stop for the day. Especially since I had decided earlier today to try to get to bed early. I also haven’t gotten up to walk enough today, so my back is hurting me a bit.
I’ll continue reading book 2 tomorrow!
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 4 hours, 14 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 15 minutes
My takeaway for today: Focus on getting to bed earlier since I seem to feel more energy earlier in the day than later these days.
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