And still more work: Day 12
Oct. 18th, 2011 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zolaOne of the things I really, really struggle with is balancing my work time with my "personal" time.
In some ways, having a job or having children gives a rhythm to your days--you have to be somewhere at a certain time, you leave at a certain time, there are days you don't have to be there, etc.
Since I don't have any of those things, it is entirely too easy to do one of two things. The first thing is to procrastinate all day. If I start crawling the web or playing a game or something, I don't have anything at a specific time that would automatically set a limit for me. The second thing is that if I get on the trail of a bug in the code, the time disappears and suddenly I'm blinking and looking around and wondering how the hell it got to be 2 in the morning.
Obviously, neither extreme is good, because either I'm working too much or I'm not working enough and then have to work too much to catch up.
One thing we did is start serving dinner at a regular time. That does help, because the growling of my stomach will break me out of whatever trance I am in. Another thing that helps is if I have things to do in the morning, I actually set the timer so that I can drink my coffee and wake up and play a game or read the news without getting sucked in--when the timer buzzes, it's time to put that stuff aside and get to work.
I think I'm going to have to do something similar for the work-too-much problem, set a time at which I'm done whether I'm done or not and stick to it.
Still, it's amazing how easy it is to lose oneself when there aren't any outside cures.
In some ways, having a job or having children gives a rhythm to your days--you have to be somewhere at a certain time, you leave at a certain time, there are days you don't have to be there, etc.
Since I don't have any of those things, it is entirely too easy to do one of two things. The first thing is to procrastinate all day. If I start crawling the web or playing a game or something, I don't have anything at a specific time that would automatically set a limit for me. The second thing is that if I get on the trail of a bug in the code, the time disappears and suddenly I'm blinking and looking around and wondering how the hell it got to be 2 in the morning.
Obviously, neither extreme is good, because either I'm working too much or I'm not working enough and then have to work too much to catch up.
One thing we did is start serving dinner at a regular time. That does help, because the growling of my stomach will break me out of whatever trance I am in. Another thing that helps is if I have things to do in the morning, I actually set the timer so that I can drink my coffee and wake up and play a game or read the news without getting sucked in--when the timer buzzes, it's time to put that stuff aside and get to work.
I think I'm going to have to do something similar for the work-too-much problem, set a time at which I'm done whether I'm done or not and stick to it.
Still, it's amazing how easy it is to lose oneself when there aren't any outside cures.
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Date: 2011-10-18 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-19 12:17 am (UTC)I need a great deal of flexibility because I have clients all over the country and of course the work doesn't come in smoothly. I actually had five days of goofing off in a row at the beginning of the month and now suddenly I've got a rush job plus normal work.
My ability to overfocus comes in handy in a case like this, I am plowing through that rush job BUT....
As I said, I've taken a number of steps (that have been effective, I might add) to prevent procrastination, but now I've got to find something similar for when I am busy like now. Burnout is a real danger if I do too much of the hyperfocus thing.