Day 19: Evaluation 2

Though I have stumbled more than I have moved forward with this venture so far, I am sufficiently happy with how thoroughly my head is in the game now that I feel it's time to make things concrete again. The first thing worth addressing is that lately, I have entirely neglected to take accounts of my progress towards certain goals. That was a critical oversight, and one I will do my very best not to repeat from tomorrow onward. An accountability journal is of little value without the accounts.

So, to begin, my schedule. If there is one thing my own experiences have taught me, it is that having a schedule of some sort, even if it's relatively open-ended, is crucial to building the habit of productivity. Being able to set aside time utterly removed from distraction to focus on one task has always worked far better for me than attempting to multitask my day away. However, planning the schedule can sometimes be daunting. For me, the first hurdle I had to overcome was saturating myself with mentally demanding activity after mentally demanding activity out of a well-intended but misapplied desire to learn and do as much as possible, as quickly as possible.

Once you've come to some realistic conclusions about what you can handle for starters, planning a schedule can be made easier by accounting for certain inevitabilities: sleep, work, eating, hygienic routines. For me, the sleep issue is one that has vexed for some time. I tend to function best with 5-6 hours of sleep, taken in two or three blocks, usually during dawn/daylight hours. The periods in my life during which I adhered to such unorthodox sleep patterns, I had a surfeit of energy and focus, my imagination was vivid and my mood stable. However, the fact that the rest of the world largely obeys standard circadian rhythms means that I have to adapt so that the bulk of my sleep takes place during the 21:00 to 07:00 block that is very widely regarded as acceptable sleeping time.

Now, work. For me, of course, this has two definitions: writing and freelance commissions. The former is, thankfully, something which can done at any time of day I so desire. Theoretically, the same could be said for freelance work, except that much of that work involves client interactions, so it's fairly convenient to plan putting myself in that frame-of-mind when I am most likely to deal with these people--and when I'm most likely to be working with my students. This time investment, then, can be pinned down to somewhere between 16:00 and 22:00, when people are off work, out of classes and still awake.

Now eating and hygiene as 'inevitabilities' are a bit harder to use as parts of your daily framework, because there's not really anything stopping a person from slotting those two elements of their day in anywhere. These, and much of the rest of my day, however, can be made easier to determine if I use a voluntary aspect of my day to anchor things: exercise. That I have fairly well-defined desires from my exercise regimen helps a great deal; I want to be able to use the nearby park with minimal chance for obstruction, I want to get the work out done during the coolest part of the day, I want to carry that satisfied and lively feeling through as much of the day as possible, I want to exercise while thoroughly fasted, and I need a significant chunk of time to be thorough.

So, then, it has to be early in the morning, as this meets all my criteria. But as for exactly HOW much time it takes up--and by extension, where I can fit that in--real precision is hard, and tolerances must be fairly wide. Even so, I can at least make estimates based on the content of my daily exercise.

The one pervasive feature is that every session will begin with mobility and dynamic stretching work (25-35 minutes) and end with static stretching (20-25 minutes), so we already know it will take at least 45-60 minutes. Next, Monday is an endurance day, which means high reps with brief rests between sets. To hit everything sufficiently, the routine would likely end up being 35-45 minutes. So, taken as a whole, my Monday routine would require 80-105 minutes. My Wednesday routine, with its lengthy waits between sets, would be about 95-100 minutes, or 140-160 minutes with stretching factored in. Friday's routine would be between 35 and 40 minutes, putting the total at 80-100 minutes.

Now, conveniently, the park is officially opened at 08:00 each morning, so I can be reasonably assured of peace and solitude if I finish my routine before that time, and given that it's helpful to maintain a steady wake time day to day, I don't want to simply sleep in by varying degrees to take advantage of that set end point. Instead, I can calibrate my waking time according to the exercise routine which takes the most time: 160 minutes before 08:00 is 05:20. I can be certain to arrive at the park at or before this time if I wake, change and leave the house at 05:00, so let's have that be my waking time and say 5:15 is my target start time, just to be safe.

I can also use this to determine certain things about my 'movement' day routines. See, while the 'movement' work itself is relatively fluid, my running training is going to follow a defined progression. At its most time-consuming, a full session would take roughly 60 minutes, which ends up being 105-120 when all the stretching is accounted for. Since the 'exercise' time slot each day would be 165 minutes long (05:15 to 08:00), I can allow for 45-60 minutes of pure 'movement' work. Similarly, I can allow for 60-85 minutes of it on Mondays and 65-85 minutes of it on Fridays.

So, okay, sweet, we have the earliest part of my day set in stone:

05:00-05:15 - Wake and prepare for exercise
05:15-08:00 - Exercise

Now, in the previous incarnation of my schedule, the next block of time was for showering and eating, but my fasting until the afternoon makes the latter a non-issue. Even so, the block of time can remain the same to allow for a leisurely shower and any time required for post-shower grooming. Lock in one more time slot.

05:00-05:15 - Wake and prepare for exercise
05:15-08:00 - Exercise
08:00-08:30 - Shower

While I'm feeling the vitality of having just exercised and cleansed myself, I want to channel my best energy and effort into my writing, so following up all that with writing-related work is only logical. First, one hour will be spent on planning and preparatory work, which always helps me greatly. Then, the remaining time until my brief mid-day nap will be spent on actual writing. The nap should end at a late-ish lunch time, when it is suitable for me to break my fast. So, this is fairly easy to figure out.

05:00-05:15 - Wake and prepare
05:15-08:00 - Exercise
08:00-08:30 - Shower
08:30-09:30 - Planning
09:30-12:00 - Writing
12:00-14:00 - Nap
14:00-14:30 - Eat

Of course, this still leaves me with some time before the ideal freelancer hours, and having only turned out 2.5 hours of writing in the day at this point, my goal of 5,000 words per day would be a strain. Having napped and fed myself well, I would be well-positioned to start into another batch of writing. Another meal would be well-positioned right around the end of that.

05:00-05:15 - Wake and prepare

05:15-08:00 - Exercise
08:00-08:30 - Shower
08:30-09:30 - Planning
09:30-12:00 - Writing
12:00-14:00 - Nap
14:00-14:30 - Eat
14:30-16:30 - Writing
16:30-17:00 - Eat

To make ends meet through my freelance efforts at the moment, my daily commitment needs to sit at four hours. Ouch! After this is the last eating period of my day.

05:00-05:15 - Wake and prepare

05:15-08:00 - Exercise
08:00-08:30 - Shower
08:30-09:30 - Planning
09:30-12:00 - Writing
12:00-14:00 - Nap
14:00-14:30 - Eat
14:30-16:30 - Writing
16:30-17:00 - Eat
17:00-21:00 - Freelance
21:00-21:30 - Eat

So that takes care of all my waking obligations. Getting sufficient sleep for my own needs with a wake-up time of 05:00 means throwing in the towel for the day at 00:30, which in turn means 00:00 to 00:30 is best spent reading, which both pleases and relaxes me. All that intervening time, then, is my free time.

05:00-05:15 - Wake and prepare

05:15-08:00 - Exercise
08:00-08:30 - Shower
08:30-09:30 - Planning
09:30-12:00 - Writing
12:00-14:00 - Nap
14:00-14:30 - Eat
14:30-16:30 - Writing
16:30-17:00 - Eat
17:00-21:00 - Freelance
21:00-21:30 - Eat
21:30-00:00 - Free Time
00:00-00:30 - Reading
00:30-05:00 - Sleep

At the moment, then, I'm sitting on 2.5 hours of time each weekday which is not already invested. There are, of course, temporary circumstantial time consumers, as well as outright inefficiencies. As my flexibility, technique and strength improve, I will require less stretching and be able to work more muscles with fewer individual exercises--by my estimate, I could bring my longest exercise routine under two hours. As I re-adjust to my biphasic sleep pattern, the total volume of sleep required will shrink. As I regain my momentum with writing, turning out my desired volume of quality material day-to-day will take less time. As my income from writing increases, my time spent freelancing will shrink.

It seems pretty daunting, the timing very tight at the moment, but there's so much potential for growth. It's exciting. I'm going to make this a good week.

Still learning,
~L