Until the semester ends, I am trying a new set of goals. This time, instead of focusing in on a particular task I need to get done, I am going to do the opposite.I am going to count everything writing-related.
This includes: blogging, idea generation, scribbling odd ideas, editing, artwork, formatting, accounting. And of course, you know, writing.
It will not include time spent reading and commenting on blogs -- no matter how business-related and inspirational they may be -- and I'm also not currently including reading. (Though I will be tracking reading, particularly keeping a list of novels read.)
What is the goal behind this goal?
It's pretty simple. I want to know how much of my uncounted time I'm actually doing something useful. I suspect that when I don't count these "support" activities, they start to blend in with useless stuff, like screwing around on the internet.
However, I also want to get an idea of how draining these tasks are. How fruitful they are. I want to, in other words, pay attention to them for a while.
The other thing that is related: I want to spend less time sitting down. I mean that as a shift in perspective. It isn't that I want to spend more time standing up, but rather that I want "sitting down" to be an activity, not the default.
One problem with this is that right now it disrupts all of my patterns. I need to re-form intellectual patterns around the physical ones. It's been great with reading. I pace up and down the office or around the kitchen when I'm reading, and this greatly entertains the cats. For working, I have mixed results, but I'm getting better. I may find that there are certain activities that I have to be sitting down to do properly.
I am not setting a particular time goal here at the moment. It's more a how high can you go? Total is open.
See you in the funny papers.
2 comments:
Very interesting...especially the "sitting down as an activity" part. I've been making more time to workout and be active lately, but it never occurred to me (well, aside from treadmill time) to read while pacing/wandering. A good idea, to be sure, along with changing "sitting" from the default to a specific "thing".
I can see this opening a lot of creative pathways (that sounds cheesy, but you know what I mean, I think)...hmm. Thanks for that.
Good luck with the new goals...
Two things led me to the "sitting is an activity" thing.
One is that I finally created the very most perfect work environment, which did not lead to any RSIs, and which I could stay in all day long -- an easy chair with a rolly computer table over it. And my health, strength and fitness utterly and completely deteriorated to Ameoba state. No amount of exercising can overcome that kind of inactivity.
The second was just all the studies that basically say what the previous sentence just said: So much health crap is not related to how much you are active or how intense the work out -- it's related to the between times. How very inactive you are when you are not doing anything else.
Post a Comment