Day 732: Starting earlier in the day

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I’m getting more and more frustrated that it takes me so long to get started on work in the mornings. This might be an aspect of the fact that I’ve never been much of a morning person—it takes me a while for my brain to start firing, so just getting dressed and out the door for my morning walk has been taking longer than it should. Then after breakfast, there are certain house chores that need to be done in the morning. It doesn’t take a huge amount of time, but it does take time.

In thinking it over, I should instead adjust my schedule so that I do as many things in the late afternoon so that I can get started on work sooner. If I stop work a little earlier, I could do some of the house chores that can be put off until then. I can’t move all my house chores to the end of the day, but I could move one or two.

It’s not going to reduce the amount of time things take, but it will enable me to get more done before lunch, and I think that will be a huge mental boost. Right now, since it’s so late when I start work, it makes me feel like I wasted time in the morning, even though I know that’s not necessarily true.

Today I had several house chores come up, so my afternoon was tied up with a few non-writing tasks. The problem was that I was exhausted by the time I got around to doing my Regency series.

I didn’t spend as much time working as I should have, but the tiredness was affecting my ability to concentrate, so I decided to just cut short my work day and try to get to bed sooner. This just reiterates to me that I need to find ways to get to my work sooner in the day. 


Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 7 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 35 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 560 words

Writing streak: 211 days

Blocking: time spent: 24 minutes

Blocking: Total number of words: 383 words

Blocking streak: 205 days

Hawaii series:

Editing: Time spent: 0 (since I didn’t write yesterday)

Writing: time spent: 22 minutes (I actually did blocking for the next scene rather than writing)

Writing: Total number of words: n/a

Writing-related business:

Regency research reading: time spent: 38 minutes

Email: time spent: 8 minutes

Marketing: time spent: 38 minutes

My takeaway for today: Stop work a little earlier and move some things that I do in the morning, like making iced tea and doing some house chores, to the late afternoon, so that I can start work earlier in the morning for a bigger mental boost.

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