Day 716: Changing up my frogs

Yesterday I had decided to try putting off my Japanese study until later so that all my “frogs”—the important but non-urgent tasks that I do first thing so that I would be sure to do them—would take less time before I started writing work.

However I decided to try something even more extreme and decided to do my writing first and then see if I’ve gained enough discipline to do my “frogs” afterward. I have a daily checklist of tasks to do, and every day I’ve been checking off my “frogs” since I’ve been doing them first thing. Usually if I don’t do them first thing, they won’t get done. But this time, I wondered if I would still get to them after my writing work, if I gave my writing work a time limit.

So I gave myself 4 hours to work on my writing, and once the time was up, I’d do my Japanese study, Regency research reading, email, a little marketing work, and 100 words on my Hawaii book.

The good thing was that I got a full 4 hours of work done on my Regency writing.

The bad thing was that I ended up spending too long on checking my email and doing marketing. As a result, I didn’t have as much time to do my Japanese. It was my fault, I had forgotten to set a timer to keep myself from spending too much time on any one task. I should have done the Japanese and Regency research reading first before my email and marketing, because those last two are things where it’s easy for me to lose track of time.

On a whole, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with doing my writing first and my “frogs” last. It might be because I still fear that those things won’t get done if I don’t do them first. I guess I just don’t trust my discipline. Also, while I was writing, the thought of making absolutely sure that I did those things later was a bit distracting and caused a little bit of stress.

However, it was nice to have a full 4 hours to do my writing. If I had gotten up earlier, I probably would have had 5 hours.

So I think tomorrow I’ll go half and half. I'll try out doing my email, marketing, and Hawaii book first (making sure to set a timer so I don’t take too long), then my writing for 4 hours (more if I can wake up early), and then doing the Japanese study and Regency research reading last. It’ll still be a test of my discipline, since the whole point of my doing my “frogs” first is because I lacked the discipline to get that stuff done if I left it for later in the day, but lately my discipline has been better. Also I’ve been better about scheduling my day, so I think I’ll be able to make sure I leave enough time to get my Japanese and research reading done. I’ll try it and see.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 20 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 236 words

Writing streak: 195 days

Blocking: time spent: 3 hours, 33 minutes

Blocking: Total number of words: 1532 words

Blocking streak: 189 days

Hawaii series:

Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes

Writing: time spent: 16 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 232 words

Writing-related business:

Regency research reading: time spent: 29 minutes

Email: time spent: 43 minutes

Marketing: time spent: 33 minutes

My takeaway for today: Try going half and half, doing some frogs before writing and some afterword, and trying to schedule my day to make sure I have enough time to do everything. It will be a test of my discipline.