I love how blissfully optimistic I am on Mondays. Ha... It's ok. You don't want to hear from me during the rest of the week, I promise. You definitely don't want the Thursday Series. Fuck Thursdays.
Long, and very unnecessary, story short: my grand plans for last week tanked. Or, more accurately, I felt like they tanked starting about midday on Wednesday but as of last night (I consider Sunday the end of the week), I completed all but 2 of the things on my list. So why do I FEEL like a failure even though I didn't actually fail too terribly?
Probably because I procrastinated.
I waited until the bitter, bitter end to finish something pretty large. And one of the two things I didn't finish was also technically a priority, which means I'm still avoiding priorities. That makes me feel shitty even when I've accomplished 400 other things. And I did complete 400 other things. All important. Not all priorities.
Time for a new tactic. I'm going to try to batch work this week. Instead of aiming for 4hrs/day of this design contract + 2hrs/day on commissions + 1hr/day on patterns, I'm going to squeeze the 20 hours into 3 days and leave the remaining 2 for commissions. If I focus on "one" thing each day (either a full day of design or a full day of commissions), hopefully I can finish earlier and open a little time in the evening for pattern design. I'm happy to do that at night because it's less stressful. I wonder if this task segmentation has been creating a bigger problem than I thought. Switching tasks takes energy.
The other thing I've observed is that I get more done when I wake up early. I feel like a pile of dog shit because my body hates waking up early but it wears off after an hour or two and I find that those are the days when I get the most done. Guess which days of the week I wake up earliest? YUP. Monday and Tuesday. Coincidence? I think not.
I've gone back and forth on this morning person thing a million times. ONE MILLION. Part of me says "You're a night person. Accept that." The other part understands that I feel so much better when I wake up early and finish work early. I may be able to stay up until 2am easily but I feel like trash if I am scrambling to finish work during that time. Just because it's physically easy for me to do, doesn't mean I feel good about it. Likewise, just because I feel like I'm going to die in the morning doesn't mean I feel bad about BEING awake and starting my day early.
The conclusion that I've drawn in all of this is that morning people are simply happier and more productive. I choose to believe this even if it isn't true; so don't tell me I'm wrong if you disagree.
It's 8:36am. I've been up since 7. That's a very big deal for this self-destructive night owl. I probably fell asleep around 1. Could be worse. Could be better. I'm so tired.
