keep a time diary

My productive time today, had I recorded it, would probably be measured in minutes rather than hours. I’ve been spectacularly bored with my job the last few days. I’ve been doing the bare minimum of work, and that sketchily, in a rush at the end of the day. However I’m going to have to catch up with myself, or I’ll end up in real trouble… one can’t really tell one’s boss it’s not done cos I honestly couldn’t give a flying f$$$ about it, can one?!

I know it’ll feel better to be on top of things – the worse I let it get the more I’m going to hate it anyway. It’s just so hard to force myself to do something I haven’t the smallest interest in. So, the Afternoon Challenge – a solid hour of work, right now till 4.30. 5 years ago

and then for another hour as I tried to sort out somebody else’s screw-up. Yay, Friday evenings :-p But hey, it’s all over till Monday! 5 years ago

And for my first trick… I’m going to work for the next hour solid and get loads done! 5 years ago

I’m replacing it with a longer-term commitment to be aware of time and how I spend it. 5 years ago

Even though I haven’t been keeping a record, I’ve been paying much more attention to how much time I waste versus how much is spent productively; and I’ve been much happier with the ratio than I had been. In combination with my other getting-things-done goal, this new mindfulness is helping me be a lot happier with what I get accomplished in any given space of time. 5 years ago

...oh, no, wait, that’s later. Work now. Bah humbug.

The only thing I’ve done so far today is nurse my hangover and feed it coffee and smoothies and bagels (they weren’t all gone today! :o) ). I actually have quite a lot to do today, though, so I suppose I’d better start making some sort of effort…

I’m meeting my “little” cousin (who’ll be 18 tomorrow) for a few drinks tonight. Can’t come fast enough, since I think the good ol’ hair of the dog is the only thing that’ll set me right! 5 years ago

...but I’m doing pretty good with this one! Slept well and woke up in good form, which always helps. Started working the minute I got in and didn’t stop till half twelve – three solid hours before lunch, which was as much as I managed all day yesterday! The only time I wasn’t hard at it was about ten minutes when I went to get my coffee and muesli, but I’m not counting that as wasted time since it’s a necessary part of my morning :o) Pardonably pleased with myself, I had a rather extended lunch break, went shopping, and bought myself a nice top to wear tonight. Then back to the office; no idea where the hour and a quarter since then have gone, but I suspect email, 43T and Ebay may be the culprits :o) Ready to get back to work now, though – two hours till quittin’ time and I intend to use them! 5 years ago

It’s being such a slow morning. No pressing work to do (though there’s plenty of background stuff I could and should be doing), no boss till lunchtime, no energy and no motivation. It’s almost eleven and I’ve done practically nothing all morning.

I know I’ll do better this afternoon – I never feel fully awake until after lunch. I’m not going to keep minute-by-minute records – they bore even me :-p But I’ll set myself a target of three solid hours’ work today (not much, but right now it feels like an impossible accomplishment!), maybe in chunks of no less than half an hour, to help me avoid getting distracted.

Evening edit: I worked hard all afternoon and got quite a lot done – once I get over the I’m tired, I don’t like my job, I don’t feel like working thing and get something accomplished, it gets easier to do something else, and then something else, and so on. I didn’t count, but I reckon I made my three-hour goal. And I got a few long-running issues sorted out at the very end of the day, so I finished on a high note rather than my usual thank god that’s over feeling! 5 years ago

7.00: Alarm goes off.
7.10: Again.
7.20 – 7.44: Get up, bathroom, coffee, find clothes for today (casual Friday, yay!)
7.45 – 7.56: Email & 43T check while drinking coffee. Start this.
7.58 – 8.01: Sit staring into space, thinking about this evening and trying to remember if I dreamed last night. Pull self together and go to shower.
>9.04: Shower, moisturise, get dressed, brush teeth, do hair, all interspersed with much daydreaming and worrying about this evening. (Feeling a bit wind-out-of-sails, having a fat day and a bad hair day – should never have to have both at once! – and my shower has developed a fault)
>9.11: Attempt several times to get out of the house, stopping repeatedly for book, yoghurt, keys, turning off heater etc
>9.30: Walk to work, rescue mood somewhat en route by listening to Joe Satriani very loud
>9.48: Take phone call before I’ve even sat down, sort that out, check work email, respond to urgent one
>10.07: Eat yoghurt, 43T & email check
>10.39: Go upstairs with first job, go to kitchenette for coffee on way back down, discover kitchenette blocked off for works under the floor, go back upstairs to use their kitchenette, go to canteen to treat self to bagel with cream cheese, discover no bagels left, settle for wholegrain toast. Sigh.
>11.20: Long phone call with L. (business contact with whom I’m now good friends), panicked checking of weather forecast on realisation that it might be frosty tonight and I won’t be home to take in my poor baby plants, chatting with colleague, general faffism
11.23: Start morning chunk job
11.55: Finish morning job with only one or two brief lapses of concentration :-p
>12.07: Email and 43T check
12.08: Trip upstairs again
>1.07 Get yummy lunch from canteen, 43T/email/random surfing while eating
1.08: Start working again, feeling much more focused
1.40: Go out to bank, stop at farmer’s market on way back for red berry sorbet – yum!
2.18: Back in office, straight back to work – want to finish early this afternoon

Edit (Tuesday): I worked my little socks off for the rest of Friday afternoon, was done by 4.30, and went off for a great weekend. :o)5 years ago

Well, now y’all know what I do all day. :o) I didn’t expect the diary entry to get so long and boring! I think I’m going to limit this goal to a week, cos there’s only so much minute-by-minute recounting of my day that I can take, never mind inflicting it on anyone else! But it did show me some interesting things.

Workday
According to the diary, I spent 8 hours 25 minutes total in the office, not including my (rather extended) lunch break, of which 4 hours 59 minutes were fully focused on work. (I hope my boss never reads this, since he’s paying me for eight hours a day… :-p) I don’t think that’s too bad, although it is much more than it would be on a normal day. Today was particularly busy, but more importantly, I paid more attention to work than I normally would because I didn’t want to have to write down that I was checking my email every five minutes! :o) Even though I don’t enjoy my job very much, it was very satisfying to get so much done today. And I don’t really feel I missed out on anything – I still got to check my mail and 43T several times, I had a very decent lunch break, I had several opportunities to chat to colleagues, and I had a couple of coffee breaks. So a having a productive day doesn’t have to mean being chained to my desk.

Evening
My evening was shorter than usual because I worked late, and it was easy not to do much because I felt I’d already put in a good day’s work. Dinner was already cooked, so really all I did was eat and spend a lot of time on 43T. As it happened, tonight most of it was important and uplifting stuff :o) though there was a certain amount of just flicking screens waiting for something to happen. The evening was saved from total unproductivity by washing the dishes. I’m not worrying too much about my failure to get anything else done, but I do intend to make this kind of evening the exception rather than the rule.

And now I’m off to bed, secure in the knowledge that even though there’s room for improvement, I’ve had a really great day. :o) 5 years ago

I’ll update this entry throughout the day and see how it looks this evening…

8.00: Alarm goes off.
8.10: Alarm goes off again.
8.20 – 8.40: Get up, bathroom, coffee, all in slow motion while brain wakes up.
>9.10: Find clothes & undies, get dressed, gather purse, phone etc, decide at last minute I don’t like my hair and fix it, leave house, check plants on way through courtyard.
9.10 – 9.30: Walk to work.
>10-ish: Chat to colleague, check email (work & personal), 43T.
10.07: Adopt this goal!
10.08 – 10.22: First minor work task, involving trip upstairs. Get coffee & muesli on way back down.
>11-ish: Eat breakfast while answering work emails, take phone calls, write this entry in spare moments.
11.05: Begin first morning ‘chunk’ of work. Supposed to be done by about 11.30 but should only take 15-20 mins.
>11.12: Do first element of task, check email, invite Moose to this goal… sigh and start work again!
>11.29: Complete task just in time in spite of multiple interruptions. (I know for a fact I wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t known I had to write it down here; in my job the ‘chunks’ of work get interrupted every so often by phone calls etc that have to be dealt with immediately, and I usually find myself doing ‘just a quick email check’ after each interruption before I get back to whatever I was doing.)
>11.41: Update this entry, call dad to arrange lunch. Start next ‘chunk’, deadline 12.00.
>11.51: 43T check, help colleague fix recalcitrant electronic calculator, bathroom, email check, start work again. Under pressure now.
12.09: Complete task after delay when thought for a few mins that it couldn’t be done at all due to outside issue. Turns out I had forgotten something discussed yesterday. Oops…
12.12: Run upstairs with payments (supposed to be up by 12, must be up by 12.20 at very latest or disastrous consequences!)
>12.25: Tie up loose ends from morning’s work. Leave to meet Dad for lunch. (_arranged time 12.20, but I know he won’t be there – I’m definitely a chip off the old block where punctuality is concerned! :o) _)
1.50: Back from lunch.
>2.00: Bathroom, brief chat with co-workers, then straight to work – not even 43T except to post this! I know I have a huge batch of invoices coming in this afternoon, so I need to get as much done now as possible.
>2.27: ‘Piecework’ (as opposed to ‘chunks’), filing.
>2.41: 43T check, email check, updating this and struggling with uncooperative formatting! Start big batch of invoices (not as many as I thought there’d be, was great to be pre-warned and pleasantly surprised rather than not to expect it and be stressed when it came in, as this particular job doesn’t come in every day)
3.07: Never want to see another invoice as long as I live!!! Going for a cup of tea.
3.16: Back to the grindstone… ::sigh:: There’s another big chunk, a daily one, which can be started at 3 – though I usually don’t start till about 3.30. It may be even later today by the time I get this first lot done. (I’m going to have to come up with a code-letter shorthand or something for the ‘chunk’ work to make it easier to keep track.)
3.46: Just spent about three minutes chatting to colleagues about the possibility of getting some music in here; we reckon it’d be very good for productivity. :o) Alll-most finished first task, must press on or I’ll be doing the second one in a rush (as usual!)
3.50: Starting second task.
>5.44: Work, work, worked straight through! (good god, that was the busiest afternoon I’ve had in a long time! Not wasting any time didn’t get things done any quicker cos there was just so much to do… but I did survive the whole afternoon without feeling overly stressed, which is very rare when it’s this busy. Not done yet though, I’m going to finish up a few things that I could leave till tomorrow, but hey, I’m on a roll!)
>6.12: Bathroom, trip upstairs with note for boss’s boss, vending machine for packet of mini cookies (I’m a bad girl, I know, but I was hungry – and I shared them with my colleague who’s also working late, so it was a Good Thing! Relationship-building! heehee), chatting with colleague, 43T.
>6.49: Work, chat to D. on phone while working
>7.09: 43T
>7.20: One more little bit of work. Now I’m going home while there’s still a bit of sunshine to enjoy on the walk! :o)
7.20 – 7.57: Walk home, pausing at park to admire flowers and inhale fresh air. Check plants. Rig up fan to blow fresh air into flat. Water plants. Heat up second portion of yesterday’s dinner.
>8.23: 43T while eating dinner.
>9.10: Still 43T. Putting kettle on for dishes…
>11.07: Much 43T-ing and exchanging of emails and planning of splendiferous Moose-meeting! Also washing of dishes, some tidying of kitchen, and unpacking of pretty new jewellery box.
11.51: Bed-time! If I’m still up at midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin. Night night! 5 years ago