Striving for efficiency

[mousme]

I got home from work last night, and the week of much less sleep than usual combined with no down time at all caught up with me. I tried to take a nap around 18:00, only to wake up this morning at 04:00 which is when I have to get up for work anyway. That meant I accidentally left poor tcaptain in the lurch, as we were supposed to have a writing jam at 20:00. Bad Phnee, no biscuit. :P

Still, I was exhausted after the last few weeks of lots of extra driving, lots of extra errands, and a whole lot less sleep (due to the aforementioned driving and errands, among other things), so getting one night of nearly 10 hours of sleep seems to have done me some good. And yes, I realise that not everyone has the luxury of getting enough sleep, and a lot of people have trouble sleeping/insomnia, but I'm trying not to feel guilty about getting those few extra hours in.

I was amused by elanya's comment in a recent post about having a day that seemed full but also involved a lot of sitting on the sofa doing not much (by which I suspect she meant "doing quiet things on the sofa" rather than nothing at all).

I seem to have the opposite problem. I suspect my days look very empty to anyone who glances at my schedule. A workday typically looks like "Get up, eat, go to work, go home, eat, go to bed." I broke it down in more detail in my unschedule the other day, so I now know exactly where that time ends up going, but I sometimes wonder if people don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I'm busy and can't find the time to get everything done, no matter how hard I try. Or else that I'm generally kind of useless and/or incompetent. :P

It must seem as though, whenever I leave Montreal to go to my job in Ottawa, I'm leaving on a mini-vacation, since I don't have to clean the house or help with Bean or run any of the household errands. I get 5 or so days of time in which I have absolutely no responsibilities, right?

Anyway, since that's not the case, I've been working on ways to make myself more efficient, to make use of the time I do have at my disposal. I've been having problems with finding myself too rushed in the mornings these days, when I have to be at work for 05:30. I am unwilling to get up any earlier than 04:00, because I find that hour brutal enough as it is, so I'm trying to implement a few time-saving measures into my morning routine. It's proving a little difficult, though. Here's what I've come up with on my own:

1- Pack my lunch the night before. The trouble with this is that I often have frozen meals, which I can't pack ahead of time, lest they thaw. The rest of my stuff can't go in the freezer. So I can partially pack the night before, but not entirely.

2- Prep my coffee the night before so all I have to do is turn on the coffee maker in the morning. This might work, provided my landlady stops putting my coffee maker away in the cupboard every day.

3- Shower the night before. I should just nut up and do this, even though I find it all kinds of awkward because the shower is right next to the landlords' bedroom on the third floor (my bedroom is on the ground floor). I can do this if I am willing to get dressed again in the bathroom before going back to my room. I'm just squeamish.

4- Set out my clothes for work the night before. I keep meaning to do this and I just forget because it's not a habit yet. I'll have to work harder on remembering this.


So, friends, what do you do in the morning so as not to feel totally rushed? Any tips or tricks for me?

Comments

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I will sort of disagree with you on "writing is a hobby" front, mostly because if you think of it that way, it will almost NEVER find a place in your schedule. (And by writing, I don't mean diary writing, to be honest. I mean creative fiction, be it 'fan' or otherwise. I do plenty of writing in my day, but it's the fiction I want to improve upon, so that's what I count for 12mowrimo. Just as explanation.)

Let me suggest a specific podcast for you: http://www.writingexcuses.com/2013/12/29/writing-excuses-8-52-you-think-you-dont-have-time-to-write-with-mette-ivie-harrison/ I absolutely adore this podcast. It's short and so chock full of brilliant advice on writing, especially in genre. You simply must check it out, the whole series. All of the award-winning authors involved have begun as 'hobbyists' with day jobs. There is nothing wrong with needing/using a day job; in fact, I'd offer that having the security of a job that makes certain money in an unrelated field leaves you in a stable place to write from, and doesn't burn up your creative juices so you can apply them to your 'hobby'.

Truth? I write at night (insomniac, here) but I am FAR more fresh and productive in the morning, so when the kids are in school, I can get up early with them and squeeze it in. Unless, of course, I've been up until 4 am, which I must actively curb. It's tough to carve out a writing niche. Dictation programs might work for 'writing' on your commute. Monicawoe writes on the subway on the way home from work. She's a master at making time for writing. When it all comes down to it, it's about prioritizing. Says the woman who can't manage to do it for shit, but I'm optimistic!

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I get up at 4am for work on day shifts, and I physically can't get up earlier than that. I'd be even more of a wreck than I am now. Night shifts are slightly easier, given that I automatically sleep less due to the daylight coming in the room. So that frees up an extra hour or so.

On my days off, I can't write at night without wrecking my girlfriend's sleep. Ditto for getting up earlier, because she's a light sleeper and the slightest thing will wake her and then she can't get back to sleep. It's not fair of me to impose that on her.

If I didn't have to take my car to work, I could write on public transit. Alas, my work schedule takes me outside of available public transit hours.

So I try to write when I have lunch breaks at work (I don't get those about half the time), and I have about 3-5 "free" hours a week in which I try to write when I don't have more pressing commitments like groceries or car repairs or whatever else.

I don't understand how dictation programs work. How do they take punctuation into account? Sentence fragments? IDK. Maybe if someone explained it to me better...

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I don't know how dictation programs work either, but on my iPad, if you say "exclamation point", it types ! So something similar, I imagine. You still have to go back in and edit, but at least you have something to work with.

You're in a tough spot. My hubs is a heavy sleeper, but my computer is not in the bedroom. Are you an outliner or a discovery writer? Preparation might be key. If you have an outline or solid idea to explore, when that sudden free half-an-hour pops up, you might be able to take advantage. But that's not a regular thing. Hmm.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I have a laptop, so relocating isn't a problem. It's just that I can't sneak in/out of the bedroom. The slightest noise is enough to wake her. :/

I'm trying to be an outliner, but with little success so far. Outlining may be the only way to get things done from here on out, though.

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I've tried both outlining (my natural inclination) and just freeform purge-writing when the ideas or words don't come. I keep flip-flopping, but I figure hey, whatever works. Forward motion is the goal, however it happens! Even if it's just banging my head against a creative block. Eventually, a crack will form...

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Let's just hope the crack is in the block and not your head! ;)

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

I may be able to get you a dictation program if you like!

From my experience with it (which is perhaps more limited than it should be), it does accept commands like "comma", "exclamation point", "question mark", "new line" and so on. And of course you can always edit by hand later. The main thing is to write, right? :-)

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Does it work on a Mac? (Or on an iPhone? So I can dictate in the car...)

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

There is a Mac version, yes. I don't know about an iPhone version however.

I actually wouldn't recommend dictating while driving a car, since that sounds dangerous; but I don't think it would be a problem to free up your hands for doing something else that doesn't require intense concentration - perhaps knitting or something. And it can speed up the writing process anyway...

Let us talk at/after the annual Goatstravanza...

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oh, silly, I wouldn't be holding my phone while driving. That's what hands-free devices are for! No worse than chatting to the person sitting next to you. ;)

If I were home with spare time, I wouldn't need a dictation program. I need something that can fill in the "wasted" time when I'm out and about.