Day 357: Check email before bed?
I spent most of Sunday sleeping or resting my back, but it started to feel better so I was able to do some writing-related work such as cleaning my email inbox and checking Facebook. However, I couldn’t get all of it done on Sunday and so I did some of it today.
It’s typically difficult for me to switch from a marketing mindset to a writing mindset, so after doing the rest of my writing-related work, instead of jumping straight into editing book 3 in my Regency series, I think I’ll take a break and eat lunch. I might be better able to get to work afterward.
***
I took a longer lunch and did some reading, then got back to work. I was able to jump into the editing without problems, even though I had been worried I’d have a hard time shifting to a writing mindset. I’m not sure if it was easier to work because I was only doing light editing or because of the long lunch. If I had been doing writing rather than editing, I don’t know if it would still have been easy to get back to work.
But this was a good experience because it showed me that it might be possible to do business stuff before my writing session if the business stuff wasn’t stressful. It also might depend on the difficulty of the writing I have to do—more mentally taxing stuff or stuff that’s got a more difficult starting threshold (namely, writing) might be more difficult for me to do after business stuff, even with a long lunch.
Lately I’ve been wondering if I need to check email everyday after all. My husband has been worried about my not checking email everyday, in case some urgent message comes for us (the household). He admits that’s not likely, but it’s still not a zero possibility.
The problem is that email and social media causes me a little bit of stress because it usually brings up things I need to do or requests for things I need to do. While today the stress wasn’t bad and it was easy to go back to work, (and that might have been because the work I was doing today was only light editing and not something more mentally taxing like writing), usually the stress from checking email affects my ability to shift my mindset from business to writing, and then concentrate on my writing.
Lately I’ve been practicing intense concentration when I work, and I’ve been able to avoid most distractions and focus on work for long periods. So there’s a possibility that my practicing of focus and concentration can help me shift my mindset and set aside the stress in order to focus on writing.
But there’s a real possibility that the stress of email will make it too hard for me to focus on work, and I’ll lose the entire day of writing. Do I really want to risk losing a day of writing in order to experiment?
Maybe I should go back to looking at my emails on my phone. If I can be disciplined and do it at the end of the day, I can look through the subject lines and senders’ names to determine if there’s anything important I need to respond to quickly. If not, I can leave it to take care of on weekends. That way I won’t miss anything important.
I think I will try that. It’s less of a risk than experimenting with trying to do email and social media before work. I can put it as the last thing on my daily schedule to do before bed, so that I will hopefully not check email before that.
I didn’t get a whole lot of editing done before I had some family things to do. Hopefully I’ll get more done tomorrow.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 1 hour, 57 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, 32 minutes
My takeaway for today: Try checking email just before bed on my phone just to see if anything urgent needs to be taken care of.
It’s typically difficult for me to switch from a marketing mindset to a writing mindset, so after doing the rest of my writing-related work, instead of jumping straight into editing book 3 in my Regency series, I think I’ll take a break and eat lunch. I might be better able to get to work afterward.
***
I took a longer lunch and did some reading, then got back to work. I was able to jump into the editing without problems, even though I had been worried I’d have a hard time shifting to a writing mindset. I’m not sure if it was easier to work because I was only doing light editing or because of the long lunch. If I had been doing writing rather than editing, I don’t know if it would still have been easy to get back to work.
But this was a good experience because it showed me that it might be possible to do business stuff before my writing session if the business stuff wasn’t stressful. It also might depend on the difficulty of the writing I have to do—more mentally taxing stuff or stuff that’s got a more difficult starting threshold (namely, writing) might be more difficult for me to do after business stuff, even with a long lunch.
Lately I’ve been wondering if I need to check email everyday after all. My husband has been worried about my not checking email everyday, in case some urgent message comes for us (the household). He admits that’s not likely, but it’s still not a zero possibility.
The problem is that email and social media causes me a little bit of stress because it usually brings up things I need to do or requests for things I need to do. While today the stress wasn’t bad and it was easy to go back to work, (and that might have been because the work I was doing today was only light editing and not something more mentally taxing like writing), usually the stress from checking email affects my ability to shift my mindset from business to writing, and then concentrate on my writing.
Lately I’ve been practicing intense concentration when I work, and I’ve been able to avoid most distractions and focus on work for long periods. So there’s a possibility that my practicing of focus and concentration can help me shift my mindset and set aside the stress in order to focus on writing.
But there’s a real possibility that the stress of email will make it too hard for me to focus on work, and I’ll lose the entire day of writing. Do I really want to risk losing a day of writing in order to experiment?
Maybe I should go back to looking at my emails on my phone. If I can be disciplined and do it at the end of the day, I can look through the subject lines and senders’ names to determine if there’s anything important I need to respond to quickly. If not, I can leave it to take care of on weekends. That way I won’t miss anything important.
I think I will try that. It’s less of a risk than experimenting with trying to do email and social media before work. I can put it as the last thing on my daily schedule to do before bed, so that I will hopefully not check email before that.
I didn’t get a whole lot of editing done before I had some family things to do. Hopefully I’ll get more done tomorrow.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 1 hour, 57 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, 32 minutes
My takeaway for today: Try checking email just before bed on my phone just to see if anything urgent needs to be taken care of.
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