Day 718: Splitting up and scheduling my frogs

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I think the adjusted schedule worked rather well today. I did my email, marketing, and Hawaii book first to make sure they got done. I made sure to set a timer so that I wouldn’t spend too much time on any one thing, although I did go a little over when I did the marketing.

Then I got started on my writing on the Regency book, up until lunch. I did my Regency research reading over lunch. After lunch, I took a short walk, so lunchtime felt like more of a break rather than a continuous time of only working.

I got back to the writing after the walk, and managed to work for a good chunk of time. Rather than aiming for a certain amount of time to work on my blocking, which I’ve been doing before, I decided to stop by a certain time so that I’d have time to do my Japanese study, which was the last thing I needed to do today. So I still managed to get a lot of writing done, but I also made sure I had time for my Japanese study.

I’m not sure why I can now do the Regency research reading and Japanese study later in the day when before, if I didn’t do them before my writing, they wouldn’t get done at all. I wonder if it’s because I’ve scheduled those things to be done at a certain time—the Regency research reading is done at noon while I’m eating, and the Japanese study was done at 5 pm, regardless of how much work I’d done on the Regency. Or is it because I’ve been improving my discipline for all those weeks when I was doing all that first thing in my day?

Either way, I got done a lot of work on my writing, and I got done all my important non-writing tasks.

I don’t think I was able to focus very well when I was blocking today. I got distracted a few times. I’ll need to continue to practice so that I can learn to focus and concentrate for longer stretches of time.

I’ll also continue with this new schedule. Now my “frogs” that I get done first thing in the day are only three things—checking my email, doing 15 minutes of marketing work, and writing 100 words in my Hawaii book. All those things don’t take much time, so I can get started on my Regency writing work within less than an hour, unlike before when I’d be doing my “frogs” for 2 hours. Instead, my two longest “frogs” are scheduled for later in the day.

I hope I can continue this and not slack off on my discipline. If I stop doing these things, I’ll have to move them to first thing in the day once more to make sure they get done.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 3 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 17 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 196 words

Writing streak: 197 days

Blocking: time spent: 3 hours, 36 minutes

Blocking: Total number of words: 1479 words

Blocking streak: 191 days

Hawaii series:

Editing: Time spent: 2 minutes

Writing: time spent: 16 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 222 words

Writing-related business:

Regency research reading: time spent: 28 minutes

Email: time spent: 11 minutes

Marketing: time spent: 20 minutes

My takeaway for today: Continue splitting my “frogs” into 3 in the morning, one at noon, and one after writing at a specific time of the day.

My second takeaway for today: Continue to practice so that I get better at focusing and concentrating on my work for longer stretches of time.

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