Until June...
/This is the final post for May. New posts will begin again on Monday, June 3rd. The next issue of the newsletter will be sent to supporters on Sunday, June 2nd.
The publishing rights to two of the posts I made this week have been purchased, and those posts will be disappearing from the site by the end of the month. Just FYI.
I’m curious how your daily work flow is managed. I understand you often work at coffee shops and such but do you have a tool that keeps you disciplined or a unique to-do list which has worked well for you? Sounds like you have multiple writing projects so I’m curious how you decide to divide your time or if you have real or pretend deadlines set up. —JF
This will be of use to no one, but it’s the most beneficial thing I’ve done for my productivity recently. It will really only work for people who create their own schedule.
The issue started because for years I’ve been trying to craft a schedule that works for me. Like maybe I should do work on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and keep Wednesday free for errands and other things. Or maybe I should focus on work for the first half of the day Mon-Fri. Then tackle personal productive activities for the second half, and every other Sunday I’ll do some sort of self-care exercise. Blah, blah, blah.
My schedule is fucked up because I have my magic-related work which involves a lot of writing, but also a lot of meeting up with people to test out tricks and ideas for the newsletters and books. And then I have my other non-magic related work which requires a different type of approach and scheduling. And every scheme I came up with to plan out my time would solve one problem but create another. I’d always end up screwing myself over in some area of life: my magic work; my non-magic work; my everyday tasks and errands as well as productive time for exercise, learning, etc; and my relaxation/recovery time.
I was constantly rejiggering my schedule trying to get it right. And finally I came to a realization. I couldn’t get my schedule to work because I was trying to divide everything up on a seven day week schedule, and what I had to do just didn’t divide well by seven.
It did, however, divide up into a good five day “week.”
So now I operate on my own made-up calendar. With six 5-day “weeks” every month. The “week” always starts on the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, and 26th of each month. (With 31 day months I just have an extra bonus day at the end of the month.)
I had to come up with my own day names: Dawnday, Blossomday, Frostday, Twilightday, Moonday. Each day has its own purpose and concentration.
The plus side is that I’ve never been more focused and organized with my time. Everything fits so well for me in this structure.
The downside is that my friends think I’m a little crazy for creating my own calendar. And I rarely have any idea what day it actually is.
Something like this wouldn’t work if you have a traditional Monday-Friday job. It would just be unnecessary. But it might be worth considering if you make your own schedule. You might find the things you need to do are better broken up along some different schedule. Maybe three 10-day “weeks” a month. Or seven 4-day weeks. Or ten 3-day ones.
I know it sounds a little crazy, but if the ideal schedule for the work you do is two days on followed by one day off, and you’ve been trying to correlate that with a 7-day week, you will drive yourself nuts the rest of your life. Might as well just go with your own thing.
What is your current note-taking app/set-up? —OU
At the moment, I don’t use anything special. I just use Apple’s Notes app. I have it set up so the Action button on the iPhone automatically opens my primary note where I dump in ideas, thoughts, quotes, or anything of any nature that I want to follow up on later. Then every week or so I go through that one long “brain-dump” note and put the ideas where they belong.
Another note-related thing I’ve been using lately is a keyboard notepad like this.
It sits in front of your laptop or desketop keyboard.
I find it to be the least distracting way to capture notes and ideas that come to me while I’m working. I don’t need to change the screen on my computer or pick up my phone. Both of those things can end up derailing me.
So with this, I just have the idea, pick up my pen and jot it down. Then at the end of my work session I transfer those written notes to something digital.
I like watching movies, but when I’d put a movie on in my home, I would find myself dicking around on my phone or otherwise being distracted. In a way, I was thinking, “Well, I’m watching this movie for entertainment, and I’m on my phone for entertainment, so what difference does it make?” But I realized I wasn’t getting the most out of my movie-watching time. I’d barely remember anything about the movie, and it was kind of a waste of two hours.
So now I have a new movie-watching approach. I call it Movies as Meditation. I put my phone in the other room and don’t allow any distractions (except the person I’m with and maybe some snacks). The idea is that this isn’t solely for purposes of entertainment. Now, watching a movie is an act of focus and giving my attention over to something completely. Ultimately, I end up enjoying the movie much more. But I sort of trick myself into that by coming at watching a movie as an exercise in mindfulness.
Some other music-related tips related to Tuesdays post:
The weekly Pitchfork Selects mix is a good place to find new music if you like a wide-range of genres.
Here is the “minimum effective dose” to keep yourself somewhat attuned to the music scene. Find a good-sized subreddit for a genre of music you like. For example, indieheads for indie music, or hiphopheads for hip-hop. Once a month, go to the site and choose it so it sorts by the “top” posts over the last “month.” Check out the top 10 or 20 posts and take a listen to see what grabs your attention.
I generally don’t have a lot of interest in top 40 type music. But I do like to follow this guy on youtube. He’s a musical genius. He can be critical of modern pop music being generally pretty terrible. But he listens with an open mind and gives a lot of respect to modern performers where deserved.
See you back here on the third!
