Day 498: Scheduled sick day
Taking a sick day today
I always take one or two sick days a month for "regularly recurring womanly issues” (is that a polite and politically correct way to say it?). The problem is that sometimes those one or two days extends to three or four or five days, not because I’m in a lot of pain, but just because I’m uncomfortable and tired and perhaps a little lazy.
But this time I’m in the middle of my writing streak and email streak. In doing a little work each day, I won’t be completely relaxing, so I’m hoping that it will prevent me from feeling lazy about returning to work, and will motivate me to get back to work sooner.
Progress on my Japanese study:
I’ll be doing my Japanese study first again. I really enjoyed doing it first yesterday—I felt a feeling of accomplishment and relief that it was done early, and I felt like it freed me up to focus on my writing. Sometimes I would have a nagging feeling about still needing to do my Japanese after my writing work was done.
When I started studying Japanese again in May, after a year (or maybe it was almost two years) off, I reset my flashcards. I had previously learned about 1500 kanji, but I reset about 1000 of them and started learning them again, this time studying them in the order of the Japanese school grade levels rather than the levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test that they give to students in the US.
I only learned a few new kanji a day. At first I learned 10 new kanji a day, because I was relearning kanji characters I was already pretty familiar with. When I moved up to Japanese grade 6 kanji, however, I dropped it to 5 characters a day because I was starting to encounter kanji I couldn’t remember at all.
But I just completed all the kanji for grade 6 in Japan! That’s about 1000 kanji total. Next, I’ll be tackling the kanji for the junior high grades.
Analyzing the Alphasmart phenomenon
After my Japanese, I’ll do a writing sprint. I think I’ll try using my iPhone and bluetooth keyboard. I set the font of the Pages app in my iPhone to a large font so that there are only a few lines visible on the screen, plus the iPhone is about the same size as the Alphasmart screen, so hopefully I’ll be able to recreate that Alphasmart experience.
it’s been very interesting to try to analyze why the Alphasmart seemed to make me write faster and be more productive. I think I’ve narrowed it down to a visual focus on the four lines that are visible on the Alphasmart screen. The screen is very small and very close to the keyboard, so I’m looking at the screen but I can also see my hands as I type.
The visual focus is a very small, narrow area. It’s like tunnel vision. And the lines I can see consist of only a few characters, so I can only view what I’ve just written and not what I wrote even a minute earlier. My visual focus is very “in the moment” and the scope is limited to a small area.
I think the key is this limited time and limited area of focus. It enables me to more fully concentrate.
Maybe this is also what helps me to be truly distraction-free. While the Freewrite Traveler is very similar, that lag between keyboard and screen is a distraction that knocks me out of deeper focus.
Anyway, I’ll try it today and see. I might be completely wrong about this, but I really hope I’m not. I’d love to be able to recreate that Alphasmart productivity phenomenon with tools more readily available than a product that’s no longer being manufactured.
The only problem I see with trying this today is the fact that I’m feeling discomfort from my monthly cycle. It’s not constant, it comes and goes, but when I feel it, it makes it really hard to concentrate.
After my writing streak is completed for the day, I’ll also check email and social media very quickly, in order to also complete that streak. But then I’ll take the rest of the day off to read. I had neglected my reading for the past week, actually (except for the time I took to read on Sunday), so this might actually be a convenient sick day to help me refill my creative well.
***
Not spectacular, but not disheartening
I did a little better writing on the iPhone today than I did yesterday. I wrote a little bit faster during the sprint, but I still didn’t write as quickly as I did on the Alphasmart.
One reason was that I spent about 5 minutes re-reading what I wrote the last time and reviewing my blocking notes before I started writing.
Another reason was because I discovered that when writing in Pages on my phone, it would capitalize words after dialogue sentences, which often ended with punctuation and quotation marks. This was a bit annoying if I wrote something like “Why are you here?” She asked. and Pages capitalized She rather than allowing me to type it as lower cased. For a while, I fought with Pages, trying to reformat it. Then I went into my phone’s settings to try to figure out what settings were making it do that and turn it off, and that took about 5 minutes.
That was a bit frustrating, and it was definitely a distraction that broke my focus for a little while.
But on a whole, the visual experience was very much like on the Alphasmart. I laid the phone flat on my desk right above the keyboard, so the screen was close to the keyboard just like on the Alphasmart.
When working on the Alphasmart, I had my computer monitor in front of me so that I could view my blocking notes, so that was the same. But my focus was usually down on the desk and the phone screen.
My bluetooth keyboard is a gaming keyboard, so it has really nice mechanical brown switches for the keys (which aren’t as wonderful as the blue switches I prefer, but it still feels darn awesome). The feel of the Alphasmart keyboard is actually quite nice, but I definitely prefer my brown switches.
Another difference was that it was kind of nice when Pages would autocorrect my spelling errors and typos (Alphasmart definitely does not do that, and I would often backspace or navigate with the arrow keys to correct them). It was also really great when the sprint ended and all I had to do was open Pages on my Mac computer to open up the synced file and copy and paste the words into Scrivener.
I wouldn’t be able to write out in sunlight with my phone screen, but I would be able to go to a coffeeshop, and all I’d need to bring is the keyboard since I could use my phone. My bluetooth gaming keyboard is not as light as some other small bluetooth keyboards I’ve bought, but it sacrifices weight for n-key rollover and anti-ghosting capability, which has been necessary for me personally. On other keyboards—and even on the Alphasmart—some keystrokes won’t register since I’m typing too fast.
So the keyboard is heavy, but still not quite as heavy as the Alphasmart. If I did write somewhere else besides home, it wouldn’t be much different from taking my Alphasmart or even the Freewrite Traveler, which is about the same weight as my bluetooth gaming keyboard.
So I think I’ll try writing this way again tomorrow and see if I can eventually recreate that amazing 2000 words per hour writing speed that I had on the Alphasmart during that one sprint. I’m actually rather hopeful.
I spent a little too much time blogging today, but I liked the analysis I did of the Alphasmart and how my iPhone/keyboard combo compares. I’ll be really curious how that works tomorrow.
***
Writing: Time spent: 27 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 592 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 1340 words/hour
Writing streak: 11 days
Editing: Time spent: 11 minutes
Blocking: time spent: 0
Email/Social Media streak: 9 days
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 49 minutes
My takeaway for today: The iPhone and bluetooth keyboard might do a good job recreating the Alphasmart experience, but I’ll have to try it again to see since I got distracted today.
I always take one or two sick days a month for "regularly recurring womanly issues” (is that a polite and politically correct way to say it?). The problem is that sometimes those one or two days extends to three or four or five days, not because I’m in a lot of pain, but just because I’m uncomfortable and tired and perhaps a little lazy.
But this time I’m in the middle of my writing streak and email streak. In doing a little work each day, I won’t be completely relaxing, so I’m hoping that it will prevent me from feeling lazy about returning to work, and will motivate me to get back to work sooner.
Progress on my Japanese study:
I’ll be doing my Japanese study first again. I really enjoyed doing it first yesterday—I felt a feeling of accomplishment and relief that it was done early, and I felt like it freed me up to focus on my writing. Sometimes I would have a nagging feeling about still needing to do my Japanese after my writing work was done.
When I started studying Japanese again in May, after a year (or maybe it was almost two years) off, I reset my flashcards. I had previously learned about 1500 kanji, but I reset about 1000 of them and started learning them again, this time studying them in the order of the Japanese school grade levels rather than the levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test that they give to students in the US.
I only learned a few new kanji a day. At first I learned 10 new kanji a day, because I was relearning kanji characters I was already pretty familiar with. When I moved up to Japanese grade 6 kanji, however, I dropped it to 5 characters a day because I was starting to encounter kanji I couldn’t remember at all.
But I just completed all the kanji for grade 6 in Japan! That’s about 1000 kanji total. Next, I’ll be tackling the kanji for the junior high grades.
Analyzing the Alphasmart phenomenon
After my Japanese, I’ll do a writing sprint. I think I’ll try using my iPhone and bluetooth keyboard. I set the font of the Pages app in my iPhone to a large font so that there are only a few lines visible on the screen, plus the iPhone is about the same size as the Alphasmart screen, so hopefully I’ll be able to recreate that Alphasmart experience.
it’s been very interesting to try to analyze why the Alphasmart seemed to make me write faster and be more productive. I think I’ve narrowed it down to a visual focus on the four lines that are visible on the Alphasmart screen. The screen is very small and very close to the keyboard, so I’m looking at the screen but I can also see my hands as I type.
The visual focus is a very small, narrow area. It’s like tunnel vision. And the lines I can see consist of only a few characters, so I can only view what I’ve just written and not what I wrote even a minute earlier. My visual focus is very “in the moment” and the scope is limited to a small area.
I think the key is this limited time and limited area of focus. It enables me to more fully concentrate.
Maybe this is also what helps me to be truly distraction-free. While the Freewrite Traveler is very similar, that lag between keyboard and screen is a distraction that knocks me out of deeper focus.
Anyway, I’ll try it today and see. I might be completely wrong about this, but I really hope I’m not. I’d love to be able to recreate that Alphasmart productivity phenomenon with tools more readily available than a product that’s no longer being manufactured.
The only problem I see with trying this today is the fact that I’m feeling discomfort from my monthly cycle. It’s not constant, it comes and goes, but when I feel it, it makes it really hard to concentrate.
After my writing streak is completed for the day, I’ll also check email and social media very quickly, in order to also complete that streak. But then I’ll take the rest of the day off to read. I had neglected my reading for the past week, actually (except for the time I took to read on Sunday), so this might actually be a convenient sick day to help me refill my creative well.
***
Not spectacular, but not disheartening
I did a little better writing on the iPhone today than I did yesterday. I wrote a little bit faster during the sprint, but I still didn’t write as quickly as I did on the Alphasmart.
One reason was that I spent about 5 minutes re-reading what I wrote the last time and reviewing my blocking notes before I started writing.
Another reason was because I discovered that when writing in Pages on my phone, it would capitalize words after dialogue sentences, which often ended with punctuation and quotation marks. This was a bit annoying if I wrote something like “Why are you here?” She asked. and Pages capitalized She rather than allowing me to type it as lower cased. For a while, I fought with Pages, trying to reformat it. Then I went into my phone’s settings to try to figure out what settings were making it do that and turn it off, and that took about 5 minutes.
That was a bit frustrating, and it was definitely a distraction that broke my focus for a little while.
But on a whole, the visual experience was very much like on the Alphasmart. I laid the phone flat on my desk right above the keyboard, so the screen was close to the keyboard just like on the Alphasmart.
When working on the Alphasmart, I had my computer monitor in front of me so that I could view my blocking notes, so that was the same. But my focus was usually down on the desk and the phone screen.
My bluetooth keyboard is a gaming keyboard, so it has really nice mechanical brown switches for the keys (which aren’t as wonderful as the blue switches I prefer, but it still feels darn awesome). The feel of the Alphasmart keyboard is actually quite nice, but I definitely prefer my brown switches.
Another difference was that it was kind of nice when Pages would autocorrect my spelling errors and typos (Alphasmart definitely does not do that, and I would often backspace or navigate with the arrow keys to correct them). It was also really great when the sprint ended and all I had to do was open Pages on my Mac computer to open up the synced file and copy and paste the words into Scrivener.
I wouldn’t be able to write out in sunlight with my phone screen, but I would be able to go to a coffeeshop, and all I’d need to bring is the keyboard since I could use my phone. My bluetooth gaming keyboard is not as light as some other small bluetooth keyboards I’ve bought, but it sacrifices weight for n-key rollover and anti-ghosting capability, which has been necessary for me personally. On other keyboards—and even on the Alphasmart—some keystrokes won’t register since I’m typing too fast.
So the keyboard is heavy, but still not quite as heavy as the Alphasmart. If I did write somewhere else besides home, it wouldn’t be much different from taking my Alphasmart or even the Freewrite Traveler, which is about the same weight as my bluetooth gaming keyboard.
So I think I’ll try writing this way again tomorrow and see if I can eventually recreate that amazing 2000 words per hour writing speed that I had on the Alphasmart during that one sprint. I’m actually rather hopeful.
I spent a little too much time blogging today, but I liked the analysis I did of the Alphasmart and how my iPhone/keyboard combo compares. I’ll be really curious how that works tomorrow.
***
Writing: Time spent: 27 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 592 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 1340 words/hour
Writing streak: 11 days
Editing: Time spent: 11 minutes
Blocking: time spent: 0
Email/Social Media streak: 9 days
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 49 minutes
My takeaway for today: The iPhone and bluetooth keyboard might do a good job recreating the Alphasmart experience, but I’ll have to try it again to see since I got distracted today.
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