I was on holiday last week and I got into a rut. I woke up around 10 AM, wrote my morning pages and caught up on news and my slacks while partner walked the dog and made breakfast. We watched a movie together before I went off to work my todo-list for the day. That list was mostly the same day to day. Multiple sets of 5 pages of reading the novel, mobility exercises, guitar practice, sewing, and AWS certification studies. I added more to the list, of course. Stuff that I do only weekly. Blog posting, video editing, planner updates. I worked the list until dinner and then my partner and I would play a video game until it was time to walk the dog again, after which I turned to working on whatever was top of mind, or unfinished on the todo-list. And then to bed around midnight.
Who’s a good rut?
On the podcast Productivity Alchemy, the author Ursula Vernon has spoken fondly and at length about positive ruts. I share her fondness. Laying out all the things beforehand lets my mind rest even as I’m getting things done. And honestly, it just feels good. I know all of what I’m doing most days, and even if the todo-list is big, the work is clearly laid out, there’s set times for work and rest. And because the todo-list is fairly varied, I get enough variety that I don’t get bored. I can pick a thing to work on that’s going to take me closest to where I want to be.
Today was my first day back at the day job. This weekend, I’m going to be at the Flights of Foundry convention. These are both challenges to my beautiful, well-crafted rut. I’m still trying to figure out how to keep my beautiful rut going. Obviously I have a lot less time to work all the things that I need to. I’m trying to keep up the pomodoros that I started last week. One for fiction, one for learning, one for content production and the last one for general admin stuff. That worked really well for me last week. It’s about two hours for the set of four. That’s doable on work days as well. It takes effort, but it’s doable.
So that’s what I’m working on this week. What are you working on,?
Recent Comments