Day 1047 - Reorder tasks or schedule downtime

I’m really struggling today with procrastination. It might be because I didn’t sleep well last night yet again—even though I went to bed early, I lay awake and didn’t fall asleep until close to six o’clock in the morning. So I ignored my alarm and overslept.

I don’t know why I felt such resistance to starting work earlier today. I was a little mentally tired, because it was later in the afternoon—I exercised this morning, but I also had to attend an online orientation for a class I’m going to be taking for the next four weeks, and it was not only a lot of information, but also I found it a bit mentally tiring since I’ve been a hermit lately and I’m not used to all the social interaction.


Maybe that contributed to it—I was trying to start work right after signing off from the online orientation, when I should have scheduled some down time after that before I started work. It’s the same reason I can’t do marketing first and immediately start writing after that, it’s too mentally taxing and it’s really hard for me to switch gears.

The time I started trying to write was also close to dinnertime. So I think I’ll eat an early dinner and then try doing my writing work after that. I don’t usually get a lot done when I work after dinner, but I’ll try not to fall victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know I can get a lot of work done after dinner if I try.

***

It was hard to get started on my dictation right after dinner, partly because my IBS was flaring up a bit, but it was a lot easier than when I was trying to start my dictation right after the class orientation session. So I think the mental break during dinner was helpful.

I have to remember that in future, that when doing something that might be mentally taxing, to schedule some down time afterward rather than immediately jumping into work. For me, since I’m such an introvert and a hermit, anything remotely social is taxing, but I also find doing marketing work draining, so ideally I should try to do writing before those activities so I don’t have to schedule down time.

I got about 30 minutes of dictation done, but I had to stop because my IBS was bothering me. But luckily, the flare-up didn’t last more than 30 minutes this time.

When I got back to my desk, while the dictation was transcribing, I decided to do something else. In this instance, the new co-op battles on 4thewords.com (multi-player battles) really gave my writing motivation a jolt. I need two particular monsters in order to complete a particular quest, but unless I start my own battle room, I have to wait for someone else to be battling those monsters and then join them, so it’s a bit random. I don’t like starting my own battle room because often I’m waiting several minutes to see if anyone will join me, and it can be frustrating if I want to write. I can sometimes do some editing, but I don’t always have editing to do while I’m waiting.

Anyway, there happened to be a room open that was battling the particular monster I needed, so I jumped right in. My dictation was transcribing on my other computer, so I decided to do some blocking work on the next scene. The monster required me to write about 800 words, so it was a good way to get myself to do some work on my blocking and have fun while I was doing it.

I finished the cleanup editing on my dictation and I was a tiny bit faster than yesterday—2400 words per hour today, versus 2300 yesterday—but I also felt more comfortable doing the dictation today. I suppose I’m getting more used to it again.

I still correct/edit myself as I’m dictating, and I realize that is a habit I need to get rid of. I will not reach higher word counts if I can’t turn off the internal editor.

At the same time, I don’t want the final dictation to be horribly messy like it was yesterday, when I had to spend so much time cleaning it up and revising it.

Ideally, I would be able to dictate without mistakes and without editing myself. That might involve more thought before speaking, but that would slow down my words per hour rate also.

Well, for now I still need to get more used to the dictation again, so I’ll think about increasing my words per hour rate after I feel more comfortable doing it.

I also just bought a Dragon dictation online course that gives you detailed instructions on how to set up Dragon in order to get maximum accuracy. I need to set up a new profile using the instructions, which will take time. Lately I’ve been trying to get my writing done first and haven’t wanted to take the time to set up my Dragon software, but I know I will need to do it soon.

I hope that doesn’t also involve getting a new microphone, but I think the one I’m using will be fine to use when setting up my new profile. At the moment, my gaming headset is connected to the ancient Mac Mini I’m using for Dragon, but I think I will instead move my microphone to the Mac Mini for dictation and use the gaming headset on my main computer for Zoom calls.

Anyway, technology issues aside, I only did about 90 minutes of writing today—dictation, cleanup editing, and blocking—which is disappointing to me. I really have to get my act together and either fight the procrastination better or schedule my tasks better so I can do my writing first, before anything else that might sap my energy.

My takeaway for today: I have to either schedule my tasks better so that I do writing before any other tasks that might sap my energy, or schedule downtime after those tasks rather than trying to jump right into writing.