Day 745: Accommodating the IBS

I’ve spent most of the last two weeks sick from the usual IBS issues, and I’m starting to wonder if a day will ever come when I’m not feeling pain from my IBS. This time, I honestly don’t know what I’ve been eating to cause the IBS, and I’ve had to simply make guesses. So I don’t know if I’ll start to feel better in a few days, I’ll just have to wait and see.

I’ve been doing the bare minimum of work every day, although some days I do a bit more than that, but I’ve only been doing about 3 hours of work on the days I feel better.

I’ve noticed a pattern in the IBS, where the most pain is between 6 am and 2 pm. I recently read a book, Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life, and apparently the intestines are most active at certain times of the day, based on the circadian rhythm, which would explain why my IBS is worst at certain times of the day.

Because of that, I decided to try to brainstorm ways to work around the IBS and still get work done.

The problem is that pretty much everything on my daily To Do list is important, so there isn’t anything unimportant that I can cut out of my day. I have to check email, do marketing, do research for my writing, and do my writing.

I’ve found that I will get stuff done if I do a little bit every day. For example, I’ve gotten my marketing done when I do a little every day. Before, when I tried to do it only on certain days, it rarely got done. When I break a marketing task up into smaller pieces, it’s easier for me to get it done, and less of a mental hurdle to force myself to do it. If I knew I had a large marketing task to do, I would be tempted to procrastinate, but since each day’s marketing task is small, I don’t have to fight myself to get it done.

The same holds true for doing my research reading and checking my email. If I do a little bit of each of those a day, they’ll get done, whereas if I try to shunt them only to certain day of the week, the size of the task is daunting.

I don’t have problems doing my writing every day except when I’m feeling sick from the IBS. The pain is very distracting and exhausting, which makes it hard for me to get work done.

However, I realized that because my writing is different, maybe it would be better to try to reorganize my writing schedule. Right now I’m doing a little bit of work on my Hawaii book every day, and then I do work on my Regency series.

But maybe I can try to only work on my Hawaii book on a certain day of the week, and the rest of the week will be for my Regency series. After all, the Hawaii book is a free read on my blog and I only need to write about 3000 words a month.

Doing a little bit of my Hawaii book every day is only about 15-20 minutes, but it’s mental energy that I have to expend for writing work, which requires more concentration than other stuff. I also need to expend energy to switch gears from my Hawaii book to my Regency series.

So I made a decision to only work on my Hawaii book on Thursdays, since I tend to have a lot of house chores to do on Thursdays, which cuts into my writing time anyway.

I decided not to do work on my Regency series on Thursdays if I work on the Hawaii book. Working on the Hawaii book is still writing work and would count towards my streak. If I end up not writing in my Hawaii book, then I’ll make sure to do some writing in my Regency series to keep up my streak.

In thinking about how to reduce my daily workload to accommodate for my IBS, I also decided to stop my blocking streak. I’ll still continue the writing streak and try to write at least 100 words or 5 minutes every day, but there will be some days I don’t do any blocking or outlining. It was a tough decision to make, but I’m okay with it. As long as I do my outlining and blocking ahead of time, I’ll always have a scene already blocked and ready to write. I want to make sure I write a little bit every day, but I’m okay not doing blocking or outlining every day.

Also, because I haven’t had as much time each day to do work because of my IBS issues in the morning, I decided to lower my expectations for my writing. If I got an hour done, great. If I got 3 hours done, even better. I just need to get writing done in the afternoon when my IBS pain calms down. Sometimes it calms down early, sometimes it’s still bad around 3 pm. I’ll just have to work around that.

I’ll try this out and see how it works. I feel a bit like I’m giving up, in trying to work around my IBS, but then I realized that’s stilly. I’ll still try my best to improve my IBS so that I don’t have intestinal discomfort, but until then, I just have to accommodate for the IBS and work around it. That way I’ll still get work done.

Writing streak: 224 days

Hawaii series:

Editing: Time spent: 5 minutes

Writing: time spent: 49 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 695 words

Writing-related business:

Email: time spent: 16 minutes

Marketing: time spent: 20 minutes

My takeaway for today: To free up the mental energy each day, only do the Hawaii book on Thursdays rather than a little every day.

My second takeaway for today: Lower my expectations for how much work I can get done in the afternoon when the IBS pain calms down.