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

[elanya.livejournal.com]

I do, or have done, mostly of these things. I find that even if I don't take out the clothes the night before, if I decide what I am gong to wear the night before it saves me time in the morning when I'm not awake enough to make decisions. I shower the night before because of my hair (I don't want to blow dry it and I'm afraid of how long that would take in any case D:), and it does save quite a lot of time - however depending on how your hair behaves when you sleep on it wet, that may or may not work for you. Maybe investing in a nice covering housecoat would be a good compromise on the shower thing though?

Taking a page from my last roomate, would it be possible for you to set up the coffee maker in your room instead of in the kitchen? he cleared some dresser space and set it up there, because the kitchen counter space here was already at a premium.

Also, not really, my day did involve a lot of just sitting on the couch chatting with people on the internet. I.... picked a Sith name for a character in a one shot? But really, most of the things I did didn't take me very lone. Even the vet trip was probably less than half an hour roundtrip >.> I think I pretty much have the opposite problem that you do - I was thinking about that when I was making my post. I have another friend on LJ who has crazy busy days - not with the homelife stuff, but she has a long daily commute, a physically demanding job, another part time job, and an internship, plus coursework... I wind up feeling very lazy, between the two of you :p

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I look to YOU for organization, so I'm not one to preach. Mostly, I have to organize the family. I pack the boys' lunches the night before but that's about it. I do far too much sitting around on the couch, thinking. Around folding laundry, anyway. I have a big calendar where I write down all my due date, and then procrastinate until the last minute.

THIS WILL NOT DO. I've started listening to that anti-procrastination podcast you suggested, and I hope it will do me some good!

Writing wise, I'm not nearly as prolific as I would like to be. At the very least, you have to get something on the page in order to edit it! So I really need to work on that. I find that I don't discovery write very well at all. I tend to have to outline, but I leave room to create within those outlines. They're not very specific.

Mostly, I need to decide to JUST DO IT. I find I do best if I am held accountable to another person. I never thought I could do writing binges with another person, say "Hey, let's get together for writing from 8 to 8:30", but so far it's working. I use the time up until 8 o'clock to think of something to write, then when 8 rolls around, I just slam it out. It may not be great writing, but that's what editing is for.

Probably not helpful advice, but it's something!

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

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?


AHAHAHAHAHAHA... no. I'm pretty sure we all realize that isn't how it works. :-P

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

Usually I just let chores slide to a point beyond what most human beings would consider to be tolerable. ^_^

But I imagine that isn't the kind of tip or trick you were after.