Day 638: Starting tasks unconsciously

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I have to confess that not only did I go to bed late last night (I was watching Kingdom on Netflix—SO good!), I also wasted a bunch of time this morning updating books in my Apple Books reader app (basically I was adding series numbers to books I haven’t read yet so I’d know which book was next in the series after I read the first one).

I fully admit it was a colossal waste of time, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself once I’d started, because I wanted to finish it so I wouldn’t have to remember to do it later. Which, thinking on it now, I should have just left a note for myself in my bullet journal to do later.

Part of the reason I did it was because my IBS was bothering me and I didn’t want to write. It’s actually still bothering me now, but I have to get work done since I wasted my morning. Why do I do this????

Actually, I think I know why. I get focused on a task and don’t think about other things, such as the fact that I should stop the task and leave a note for myself to do it later. I don’t even remember consciously decided to start the task in the first place, which is a really bad habit. If I were more conscientious about what I was doing, I wouldn’t get pulled into a time suck trap like that. Come to think of it, that’s one of the reasons why Facebook and Twitter would pull me into a black hole of lost time.

So I need to work harder to not do something unconsciously, but to be deliberate it what apps I open when I get to my computer. Maybe if I close all apps except my work apps just before I go to bed at night, that might help.

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I ended up getting a lot more writing done. Some of it was old text that I copied and pasted (like yesterday), but about 700 words of it was new writing. I also got blocking done on the Regency and brainstorming done on the Hawaii book.

I hope I can do better tomorrow about getting work done earlier in the day.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 15 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 1053 words

Writing streak: 117 days

Blocking: time spent: 1 hour, 13 minutes

Blocking streak: 111 days

Hawaii series:

Outlining: time spent: 1 hour, 22 minutes

My takeaway for today: I need to work on not starting tasks unconsciously but to be focused and deliberate when I sit down at the computer.

My second takeaway for today: To prevent me from opening non-work apps and getting distracted in the morning, close all non-writing apps on my computer before going to bed.

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