Month: July 2016

Starting well

Lynn

I had a bit of a late night, so I adjusted today’s schedule to 9–11 & 1–5. If I feel like it later, I’m going to make up a bit of the 4 hours I missed yesterday. If not, the plan is to make them up tomorrow, because I should be fully back on my early morning schedule by then.

Otherwise, the plans I made yesterday are off to a good start. I feel better after a good night’s sleep. I had scrambled eggs and a small can of V-8 (original) for breakfast. Now it’s time to avoid thinking about food again until lunch. Also, I took an ibuprofen this morning and I’ll take another at lunch time, in an attempt to hold off the headache I expect will show up when I don’t have coffee today. Relapses happen, but I’m taking charge of this one right now; there’ll be no more coffee for the foreseeable future.

Time to get to work. I want to write 3,233 words, preferably in 4 hours. That way I’ll have time to start on those covers I want to finish.

July 11: follow up & the decision to go all in

Lynn

I’m really disappointed in myself right now. A couple of things happened that stopped me from returning to my work at 1 pm today, one of those being a  headache. That’s a legitimate issue, but in all truth, I should have worked through it. I needed to work through it.

I know what was to blame for the headache. Four days ago I drank a cup of coffee. The next day and the day after I drank another. Yesterday, I continued the pattern.

Today I didn’t. And I got a headache.

Just to prove the point to myself, I finally gave in and drank a cup of coffee at about 5 pm. Yep, a half hour later the headache started to get better.

It’s gone now. But my day ended up completely off-kilter and I just never recovered. Also, I started to obsess over the fact that I’ve been regaining some weight I lost last year. I can’t write, I’m having trouble controlling my eating, my time, my attention—it all seems to point quite clearly to me toward the fact that something’s got to change.

Moderation isn’t working for me, in anything.

Tomorrow I begin a new plan. I’m going all in, moderation be damned.

I will follow the schedule, even if I’m just staring at the damn laptop screen and doing nothing.

Meals will be meat, vegetables, and fruit, and nothing else for two weeks. I eat a varied diet—but I eat too much!—and I eat way too many sweets. I am completely addicted. I don’t say this to make light of addiction. Alcoholism runs rampant on one side of my family tree. Obesity runs rampant on the other. I think it’s pretty obvious addiction issues plague both.

There’s a reason I’m very, very careful about how much and when I drink anything alcoholic. I’ve never been drunk. Ever. And I never plan to be.

It’s time I started treating certain foods as if they were alcoholic beverages. Frankly, I think my body already does. I’ll just make it a conscious choice now to do the same mentally.

(Just a quick note: I’m not banning grains, but honestly, I generally only like them when they’re part of cakes, desserts, or smothered with sugar so what’s the point of trying to fit them in? Toast? Only if there’s sugar and cinnamon on it. Rolls? Only if I add honey to the butter. Oatmeal? Only with sugar and maple syrup. Rice? I add sugar!!! Usually a tablespoon per cooked cup or I can’t eat it. I can’t stand cornbread. I don’t even like wheat bread that much.)

So that’s it. Tomorrow I’m taking control of a few areas of my life that feel completely and totally out of my control.

Wish me luck getting over this hump.

July 11: Plan and results

Lynn

Plan is first, results will be in parenthesis after.

Work from 9–11
Fix Word style set issue (done)
Write (deleted more than I wrote, ended at -287 words)
Work from 1–5
Write
Experiment with Photoshop Elements
Export GIMP file to PSD format (with flat background) and see if typography is easier/better/quicker with Photoshop Elements

The experiment begins: rules of adjustment

Lynn

So today I’ve already had to make an adjustment to the schedule (but only for today) because I rose late and I’m not getting started at 7 am.

The first thing I decided was that I’m going to have to have some rules for adjustments. :)

Rules for adjustments to the schedule

  1. Lost time should be made up in the same day.
  2. Lost time should be added to the end of the 1–3 time block.
  3. The 11 am to 1 pm break should stay the same no matter what time I get started.
  4. Assume there’s an “if possible” tacked on to the end of every rule above. :)

Benefits of the rules

  1. Sticking to the planned number of hours of work gives me plenty of time to meet my writing goals: 3,233 words a day, 98,333 words a month, 1,180,000 words a year. If it’s ever going to happen, I’ve got to guard the time I need for it.
  2. Even if I skip my entire morning, I’ll still only have to work until 7 pm to make it up! Meaning I don’t even have to take a break for supper because although I don’t like eating late, 7 pm isn’t too late. ;)
  3. A simple, recurring lunch schedule throughout the summer means my children can plan to have lunch with me if they want without having to wait to see what kind of work day I’m having. At their ages, they don’t always want, but sometimes they do.
  4. Having some leeway in the application of the rules always makes me feel better.

I’m feeling hopeful about this schedule. I’m also not feeling pressured the way I usually feel, even though I’ve already messed up with today’s late start, so I’m hoping that’s a sign of good things to come from this experiment!

Experimenting with a schedule again

Lynn

I know it’s crazy. I know I’ve done this before. I know it didn’t work. I kind of don’t care. I need something to get me out of this black hole my writing productivity has fallen into and I’m thinking a schedule might be what I need.

It’s a move born of desperation, I promise. My last resort, if you will.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to a 40 hour a week schedule (okay, technically 42, but I like working with whole numbers and I want to write 7 days a week). This plan came about because of an article I read today called “The Unexpected Freedom of an Eight-Hour Workday.” It touched a nerve.

So I’m giving it another shot. Anything to save me from myself.

I’m planning to work for 6 hours each day. I’ll write until I reach my 3,233 words a day goal (hopefully in 4–5 hours) and fill the rest of my time with publishing work.

The schedule for almost all days: 7–11 & 1–3.

So that’s it, the sum total of my plan.

Failed experiment: site blocking software to fight distractions

Lynn

Maybe I should give it more time, but I’m not going to. I’m calling this experiment done. Here are a few of the reasons I think this one failed.

  1. I spent a lot of time trying to tweak the block sets, but nothing I came up with fit my work patterns
  2. It pushed me toward browsing the internet and reading the blocked sites on my phone (and I definitely don’t want to develop that habit!)
  3. The out of sight, out of mind approach tends to work best for me and realized this was doing exactly the opposite of that

Time to try something else, and I’ve already got something in mind. But I’ll leave that post for later. :D

It’s not too late; a plan for the rest of July

Lynn

I’d like to finish 3 books in July (or get close to it). I’m off my goals by quite a lot, but after a bit of math, I realized it’s not too late to make July my best month ever. I don’t even have to add extra words to my 3,233 words a day goal to do it. I just have to actually write every day. :)

There are 21 days left in July (not today): 21 x 3,233 = 67,893. My best month ever comes in at 57,249 words. That was only 2 months ago in April.

The books I’d like to finish including estimated word counts and current word counts:

Est WC Actual To write Total Daily
Novel 50000 41,648 8,352
Novel 50000 29,675 20,325
Pen name novel 50000 1,378 48,622 77,299 July 3,681

If I want to actually finish all three books, I do need to write a bit more every day, but even that doesn’t seem out of reach. I’m going to go for it.

Distracted today by an anti-distraction add-on for my browser

Lynn

This morning I installed Leechblock, an anti-distraction, anti-procrastination site blocker add-on for my web browser. So far, I really like it, even though I lost edits to this post TWICE because I couldn’t stick to the time limits I set for myself and got blocked before I saved my edits. Totally my fault, because I turned on the menu item in the browser that tells me exactly how much time I have left on a site and I knew I was letting myself get too close to the limits each time it happened. :o

I set up some fairly complex blocks and delays, and I’ve spent a lot more time on it than I’d planned. I’m a little unsure if it’s going to turn out to be worth the time I’ve spent, but I’m hopeful. Unfortunately, there are still some tweaks to be made, but I think I’ve mostly got it how I want it.

[removed for edits and pasted below with changes]

Well, that’s it. I gotta go or I’m going to find myself blocked! :D.

Update

That lasted about 30 minutes. And it’s obvious I’m going to be doing most of my work outside my ideal time span, so the time blocks I set up aren’t going to work to help me at all.

Time to do a little rethinking on this. I’ll update when I settle on something.

All right. I’ve made some tweaks.

I’ve set up 5 block sets.

  1. Distractions – blocked outright from 0700-1400 (7am to 2pm), with a 20 minute limit for the rest of the day
  2. Sales reports – blocked after 15 minutes between 0700-1400 (7am to 2pm) – on publishing days, I’ll deactivate the add-on because I’ll need unfettered internet access, and there’s no easy way to account for that
  3. Internet limits – limited everything except weather.gov and Google calendar between 0700-1400 (7am to 2pm) to 60 minutes total – if I’m spending that long browsing websites, I’m probably just procrastinating, which can wait until after 2pm :)
  4. Strict limits  blocked outright from 0700-1400 (7am to 2pm), with a 10 minute limit for the rest of the day
  5. Blogging – blocked after 30 minutes between 0700-1400 (7am to 2pm) – this is me trying to make Parkinson’s Law work in my favor – I don’t want to cut off my blogging on days when I need the accountability, but I also don’t want to spend too much of my writing time updating a blog post

What this comes to each day is that in total I’ll spend no more than 60 minutes of my day between 7am and 2pm doing things in my browser. There’s still email, since I don’t use my browser to check, but I really am hoping this will cut down on how much time I spend online distracting myself from writing. :)

It’s a bit late now and I want to get up before noon tomorrow, so I’m going to go. But I’m excited to see how this works tomorrow. First goal: not to override the add-on and see how it works. It’ll be a fun experiment!

Oh, and yeah, I can totally get online with my phone or a tablet, but I believe there’s still benefit to this: I can try to break some bad habits; morning time is my best writing time and I’ve been spending lots of it jumping around online on the computer.

I need a plan for tomorrow

Lynn

I feel so completely out of sorts because I haven’t been writing. I don’t feel like I’m going to get out of this funk without a plan of some kind. My mind is so far from my stories that it feels impossible to move forward.

I asked my son what kind of plan I should make and he said: “Work. Your plan needs to be to work.”

I think he might be right. :o

 

Independence Day!

Lynn

Today is the last day I need to let myself get away with not writing to my goal word count. June was my worst month for writing since January. It was bad. I admit January was worse, since I ended that month in the hole. :D

I’ve been distracted for about two months now, starting about the time school let out for the year and my A/C stopped working, but instead of getting better after getting my A/C unit fixed, and the kids settling in for the summer, it’s gotten significantly worse this year.

It got even worse this week, with my beloved phone giving me significant trouble with some recent updates to Google services. I finally had to give up on it and migrate to a new phone.

Of course, I went out with my usual impulsiveness and bought a phone while I was stressed. :D

I paid for it, oh, boy did it. On Friday, I bought an LG V10. Cost me $710 and I liked it—it was an amazing little machine—but by Sunday afternoon, I was over it.

The battery lasted 3 hours on Saturday, and all I was doing was a bit of internet and email—no video at all. Then it took 5 hours to recharge. What?

I did some research on it, talked to the shop where I bought it, and did a factory data reset. At this point, I was anxious and irritated, because it was a new phone and I don’t like stress. I wasn’t doing much with the phone at all, so battery drain shouldn’t have been so significant—I even kept it in airplane mode for a while.

Overnight, the battery charged to a higher level and seemed set on Sunday to run for about twice as long as it had on Saturday. I needed that battery to last at least 12-14 hours, if not significantly longer. I was getting 6-8 hour estimates based on my Sunday morning usage. (Very light.)

So yeah, the factory data reset helped and the battery life improved, but not enough. Not by far.

At that point, I started to really consider all the other things about the phone that weren’t working out as I’d hoped. The 5.7″ display was beautiful, but I couldn’t hold it comfortably in the palm of my hand for very long. That massive display wasn’t much smaller than the display on my 6″ Fire, which I like to hold two-handed, but can’t really manage in one hand without cramping my hand. The LG V10 was entirely too much phone for my hand.

This made me realize something else: I actually like having a range of small, medium, and large devices to choose from depending on what I want to do, and I definitely like having at least one small device for reading because of my small hands. I’m short and my hands are sized appropriately. :) It was no fun holding that huge phone.

I don’t even want to know how much power that screen would use up during a reading binge—I didn’t get to test that. I read for about half an hour Saturday morning before I noticed how quickly the battery was draining. :o

Then there’s the $710. I looked up a few other phones online and realized I’d really missed how cheap smartphones had become. I found something comparable to my Droid X (only better* and newer, of course) for $70.

What?! Yeah. $70.

I took the LG V10 back. I had 14 days to make a return, and I decided Sunday afternoon that I’d overbought by a ridiculous degree, and that $710 was a ridiculous amount of money to spend only to be disappointed.

What this experience taught me was that I don’t need a flashy phone; I need a workhorse.

The only app that I really wanted on my Droid X that it couldn’t run was OneNote. I definitely needed a phone that could run newer apps, but… that was it. Any decent Android phone with the newer OS on it could do that.

So, I rethought my entire plan: no more thinking I needed the best phone I could find so I could ride out a long time on the same device, no more thinking I needed a replaceable battery so I could keep the phone working well as it got older. Smartphones are ridiculously cheap now and an upgrade at today’s prices just isn’t the big deal I’d imagined it would be. Only the top of the line smartphones are still pricey and I had fallen so far out of the loop I hadn’t even realized that. :o

I replaced the LG V10 with a cheap little Moto e with the intent to upgrade (if I want) after doing my damn research. Impulsiveness won’t win again on this issue. :D Lesson learned!

*Mostly better. In actuality, the camera is not better. Since I take so few photos, I decided I didn’t care. The phone was $70. Sadly enough, my impulsiveness cost me on this too, because I came home after buying the little Moto e and found it available on Walmart.com for $35! Holy crap.

The truth is, I’m remarkably satisfied with the phone even at $70. I like it. I hadn’t realized just how slow my Droid X had become. The Moto e is great for me and I’m thrilled I didn’t end up spending $710 + $70 sales tax after all.

Now, off to a fourth of July cookout! :D I’ll be back later to worry over the writing I’m going to have to do to make up for all the writing I didn’t do in June. :)