Evening Shift
I am going to try an evening work shift tonight. I truly do not like the sound of that. But my work day today is being split by some kid things that don’t make sense to outsource, and I need (NEED) to get some writing done.
(It did not get done before now, because I had course-related stuff to do. I have been pretty focused today, but I had two presentations to create + prepare, so that took up much of the morning.)
((Why am I not doing the writing now? Because I only have 30 minutes and that is a perfect create a blog post type of time interval, not a get deep into your big writing project kind of interval. For me, anyway.))
(((Maybe I need to change my mindset about that? But it’s hard. And really, 30 minutes probably would not make much of a dent. I need ~2ish hours, I think, to meet today’s writing goal.)))
Note that I did say “evening” and not night. We are talking like, 5:30 – 7:30 pm here! And just on a few selected nights, perhaps once/week. Personal pep talk: working until 7:30 pm (when you took a kid-related “break” from 2:30 – 5:30) isn’t exactly a terrible hardship. The problem is that my brain typically goes off-duty at about 5:30 pm. CAN I get it back into gear? WILL I write nonsensical things? WILL it be terribly inefficient ( <– this is a legit concern; I am generally a pretty efficient person but I’m not sure that is true at night and I don’t want to end up having to work far longer because I become slow/clunky at dusk.)
ON THE UP SIDE, those are my peak toxic-waste-scrolling hours as of late, and so having something else to do probably isn’t the worst thing ever.
Will report back!
4 Comments
I am definitely a morning person, but I work 12:00-8:30 most Thursdays (I am a public librarian). I struggle with being productive sometimes in the evening hours, but then I usually get a second wind. Especially if I can really make myself focus and get into what I am working on. I feel like a little physical activity (a quick walk outside or some jumping jacks in my office) can help jumpstart productivity mode.
Good luck!
Morning person here! Once a month I have to work in the evening and I am talking after the kids go to bed late evening – the worst, in my opinion! It’s to prep for an important monthly meeting where for a variety of reasons mostly beyond my control, I just don’t have all of the materials until the night before. Anywho, sometimes it feels painful to get started, but ultimately I end up in a great zone and get everything done and am as productive as any other time. You got this!
Hi Sarah! Thank you again for generously sharing your process. I recently watched Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron documentary a couple of times which basically followed him for 7 years as he created his last movie which won the Oscar. I am mentioning this here because what struck me as a new insight during this documentary is how much Miyazaki relies and needs other people around him to energize himself and keep going when he is tired and stuck. We always think we need to just dig deeper in ourselves to do “deep work” and keep the discipline and motivation going. I think we actually need collaborators, other people who care similar to our running buddies to get ourselves to the next level of what we want to do. Just a thought.
Hi Sarah, I found this article really helped me develop the mindset needed to just plug away at projects when I had time. https://medium.com/creators-hub/no-time-write-anyway-7b525c028d4e?sk=v2%2F9b6caee1-8a16-4168-820d-5abf5e16a56e