I am desperately trying to adjust my sleep schedule to complement my desired work schedule. Unsurprisingly, the past 6 months have been very lenient on my need to get to sleep at what my mother would call, “a reasonable hour.” My current contract isn’t exactly demanding early morning hours from me… but I do like to get work over with as quickly as possible and no matter how late I stay up that means I’d still rather be done work by noon or 2 p.m. I’ve made some progress in the past 2 weeks and I’m falling asleep about an hour earlier now. Of course, I want to sleep about 2 hours longer now too which is messing up my morning mojo.
It’s not even that I’m most productive in the morning. As a night person, I’m most productive and creative between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. Okay, that might be due to training in college as well. I perfected writing the 10 page literary analysis in those 5 hours the night before it was due. (I’m older and wiser now and actually write rough drafts, I swear.) But work is work and I want it to be done. I like to get a jump on things before other folks are at their desks and I like to be done first. FIRST, I say! Too often I’ve ended up working from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. because “things come up” throughout the day preventing me from leaving. This is somewhat worse at home where it’s not so much a matter of leaving as it is a matter of finding time to get out of my pajamas, eat and maybe even stop work before dinner.
This is all coming back to me now, somewhat acutely, because in my current contract I’m working from my personal desktop computer. In the past I’ve had a “work machine” that I could pretend I would turn off at 5 p.m. Right now I’ve set up my work e-mail in Mail along side my .Mac e-mail. I have a couple of heavily-tabbed Firefox windows open for work purposes as well. (On top of this, my computer is not the most spry of creatures and I abuse Firefox horribly with the 6 million tabs I usually leave open.) So far I’m doing a good job of not falling into the too-man-hours trap on this contract but I am feeling the omnipresence of work stuff in my world.
Ultimately, the problem is that my desire to get a jump on work and be done first gets me up in the morning while my desires to hang out, read, play games and … um… ramble on foolishly in a blog keep me up too late at night. I will break this cycle! I swear!
Right after I finish editing an article I’m writing that’s rather late…
My wise words for the day are: If you get the funny feeling you should back up your files: DO IT. Either the Universe is warning you of impending doom or your subconscious is telling you your documents have become too important to lose.
