During MagicWeek I set up a pretty awesome schedule and although I didn’t stick to it every single day, I did at least enact the morning routine every day, whatever time I made it out of bed. The first two hours of the day go like this:
- Up, stretches, futon cleared up, other pottering (1/2 hr)
- Run/exercise (1/2 hr)
- Stretch, shower etc. (1/2hr or so)
- morning check-in/daily plan + fruit! (whatever time is left – before going online)
- and that pretty much set me up for the day. Two hours may sound like a long time but it’s not, really, and it’s worth it to start the day in a healthy and positive manner. I set my alarm for 8am but that was only because that’s when it’s been getting light! – there should be a glorious four months or so in the summer when I can make this my daily schedule for work days too.
I’m going to carry on swimming until that point, I think, which is basically the same set of tasks over three hours instead of two, including half an hour of swimming, travelling into work, and having check-in time over breakfast.
When it comes to evenings, I still need to plan to be in bed by nine unless I’m feeling excessively energetic, and I’d like to fit in either a bath, or painting and a foot-soak, to make sure I’m properly wound-down, so that’s another hour gone. Throw in half an hour’s piano and that only leaves me an hour of useable time, which is about one major project. BUT if I already have painting factored in, and assume I can do writing at lunchtime/work, then the only major task left is song-writing/recording so that can be my default evening project, for the evenings I have in.
Which are quite few really, with choir on Tuesday, shopping on Friday and possibly a coffee night, that only leaves two nights a week, which is two hours on songs… making it even more crucial to make sure those sessions happen. In reality I know it’s possible to squeeze more time out of the week than this but it’s also equally possible that little things will eat away at what time there is, so it’s good to have a plan!
At the weekends I will keep the routine I’ve had this week if I’ve got nothing on – a bit of a lie in but start moving it back as the mornings get lighter, those first hours of daylight are my favourite of the day. If I’m not out, my weekends are my main chance to work on the projects that are going to change my life. Still, I can’t make more time than there is – those projects are going to happen, it just might take a while.
The one thing that’s niggling me is that I need to find a better way to use my journey time – almost two hours every day. I can’t paint, or write (well I could draft stuff I guess), or play my piano, so it’s a toss-up between taking on something else (studying? could be good language time) or just keeping it as calm and chilled out as possible and conserving energy for everything else.
