I’ve been trying to write about my habits in a sort of bullet list, in some sort of orderly fashion. Progress on that has been a little slow, and I’m not feeling the feelings I want to feel from doing that. It feels like a bit of a big project. So I figured I’d do a word vomit about it.
Let’s start with when I wake up. When I wake up, I tend to feel tired and groggy. I don’t get out of bed straight away, I lie in for a while. Once I’ve “sobered up” a little, I typically grab my phone and start looking for notifications– Facebook (I’ve just uninstalled it from my phone), Twitter, Instagram (actually not really helping me… maybe I should uninstall this one too.) I have a Trello board now with my “currently thinking about / to-do” list, and I AM starting to develop a habit of checking it everyday. But I don’t like what I do in the mornings. I like the idea of watching a motivational video, but my wife is in bed with me and I don’t want to annoy her by playing some loud noisy video. So I think what I should do is write a note to myself in Evernote and then have a shortcut to that on my home screen, so that I read it in the morning and psych myself up. Maybe I’ll write that right after I finish this.
Once I’ve gone through a bunch of notifications (and I typically feel a bit silly about this, because I can always check these things once I’m out the door and on the way to work… if I even care to. I could use that time to do something more substantial, like watch a video of something I care about. I’m hesitant to do this because I don’t want to waste data, because my wife’s always bugging me about data. There’s probably a superior solution that doesn’t involve data– I should be able to save things to my phone or something. I’ll ask her for her thoughts.)
I wonder if I should have prioritized reading for things I should read on my commutes. Having wondered it, I know it to be true. I still haven’t read the Bloomberg “What is Code” article, and I know I want to. So why haven’t I done that? Something to think about.
There was a time where I used to try to write word vomits on the train, but now I’m thinking I don’t really like to do that. It typically results with me having an incomplete vomit, and I hate having to revisit half-complete vomits because I can never quite recreate the state of mind I was in when I wrote it. But I suppose I could just continue the vomit once I reach work, and quickly finish it and ship it. So that’s an option. It’s certainly superior to checking Twitter, which never has anything useful for me anyway. I’ve unfollowed most people from my personal account, so there’s barely anything to see.
Oh, before I leave the house I have a routine where I use the toilet (and typically do some reading while I’m in there. I’m proud of this routine– it gets me all this nice extra reading and makes me feel like I’m learning and growing) and shower and towel off and get dressed and leave the house. I’d like to take 5 minutes to meditate before leaving the house, I feel like it would put me in a good state. And that would help me decide if I should read something or write something during my morning commute.
Once I get to work, I typically go straight to my desk and turn on my laptop. But then I still haven’t gotten around to developing a simple checklist of work tasks I should do everyday. This is silly and annoying. I should create a trello card with my Dailies, and get those dailies done every day. There’s a minimum amount of stuff that needs doing everyday and I should make sure that I do it. I should make this a part of my personal board.
Then there’s lunch, and after lunch I tend to feel a little unproductive. I’m not very good at doing “worky work” (dafuq am I trying to say with that phrase? I guess work that’s public facing– I’m not in the mood to reply to emails or write articles or do editing) after lunch. So I should use that time to re-plan my day… probably with pen and paper. Maybe do some strategic thinking for some set amount of time. Then I should pick a task and attack it with single-minded focus. I typically take a coffee break either after lunch or at around 4– that habit is probably going to change because the coffee place a floor down from my office is going to be closing at the end of the month. Should I find coffee from elsewhere? Or should I stop drinking coffee altogether and pick something else? I’ll probably be eating granola bars and stuff anyway– otherwise I get low blood sugar levels and then my last two hours are unproductive. Maybe I should set up an alert for that to make sure that I keep to it. Doesn’t really feel necessary. I’ll add a task for myself to think about it, anyway.
My commute home– if I have colleagues leaving with me, I spend it chatting with them, which I enjoy very much. Otherwise I typically… do social media stuff again, which is boring and annoying. So here again I should have a “for commutes” bucket of reading and writing ideas that I can focus on. Or I should just listen to music and be calm and relaxed.
Then I get home. Sometimes my wife and I have dinner together at home, sometimes we eat takeout, sometimes we go out for dinner. I should plan these things with her in advance, earlier in the day or way in advance. I should set aside time to make these plans. I’ll want to think about that one too. And then… we might lounge around at home, I might be doing some unfinished work, or we might watch some Netflix together. If I’m really in a good mood I might play some guitar, or read a book.
I have some routines that only get triggered in certain circumstances. If I’m up really early, I’ll maybe go for a run. If I’m home early, I think about going for a run, too. I should probably write about that in a separate vomit since this one has crossed 1.1k words.