Getting glazed over at work:

Often after lunch, I have a post-lunch ‘crash’ where I’m all lethargic. This is worse if I didn’t have breakfast in the morning– again, something that happens if I didn’t sleep and wake early the day before. But what happens is… after coming back from lunch, I just start messing around instead of picking a specific thing to do. Ideally I think I should do one important work task before lunch and another one after lunch. Then maybe around 3pm or so I could take a break, before then picking one more task. That would be amazing, if I did 3 solid work tasks a day at work. I wouldn’t feel so frustrated, like I’m just doing a lot of little things that don’t really contribute to the big picture. I need to sit down and clarify how each thing contributes towards the larger picture. Otherwise it’s like I’m just rearranging cutlery.

I think part of why I feel frustrated is that I’m not connecting the dots properly to the larger vision. Why we’re doing what we’re doing, and how my individual actions help. I should draw a little map of that. I keep approaching my work like it’s something massive and complex, but really I have a few little tasks that add up into bigger things, and I just need to break everything down into steps. This is something I’ve been putting off forever, again probably because it’ll force me to confront things that I’m not so good at, and force me to do things that might not be the most interesting, fun or easy things to do. But then and again, I’ve found that if I don’t do those important things, everything else is trivial. It’s like polishing tyres on a car that has an engine that doesn’t start.

Leaving work:

I tend to linger at work until pretty late-ish, especially if I’ve been relatively unproductive. This is irrational– it’s me hoping that spending more time at work means that I’ll get more stuff done. Which reminds me of my experience in NS, when I used to saw away slowly and laboriously at some thick cloth that I had to cut. Turns out that hard, sharp, fast strokes cut a lot deeper than monotonous sawing. That’s how I ought to approach my work. Really hard, focused bursts rather than a general vagueness.

I should leave work on time– maybe even a little early, if I get all my stuff done. Getting home before sunset makes me feel happy. I like seeing sunlight through my window at home, it makes me feel a little happier to be alive and a little less dark and depressed. I guess it’s just nice to be out and about in the sunlight. This is yet another reason to wake up early in the morning. I especially like being up and about before it gets too hot– that is, 7am to 9am or so. It’s nice to head out to exercise.

Commute home:

Again, I should either read a book or read something interesting, or if something’s on my mind, write a word vomit.

Shower:

I should always shower immediately when I get home. It just makes me instantly feel so much better. Sometimes what I do is… I come back and I’m tired so I lie on the sofa for a while, or I do some work (which honestly, I should complete at work itself, at least 95% of the time).

Dinner:

When my wife was working in the same building as me, we used to have dinner out pretty regularly. I guess now that we’re apart, I typically either buy dinner home, or she prepares something before I get back. We need to sit down and figure out our meal plans in advance, otherwise we tend to default to rather unhealthy options. If we plan early, I can buy whatever groceries we might need on the way home from work.

Which makes me think about eating healthy snacks at work. We have granola bars, somehow I haven’t gotten around to eating them very much anymore. As I think this, I realize I’m a little hungry and I should go put something in my mouth. Okay, back. Just ate a granola bar. Interesting. I realize that I don’t typically eat them as much as I ought to because they’re a little tedious to eat– they flake, and they’re a little dry and rough. But I also realize that I very quickly feel a rush of energy in my head. Which is something that will be very useful when I’m trying to do work. So I guess I should be mindful of that. “It’s a little tedious but not actually as tedious as you think, and it refuels you so you’re able to do better work, faster, be done faster, and be happier.” I should do the same for everything that I know I want to do. These things shouldn’t be reasoned decisions each time, that’s unnecessarily costly in terms of willpower. I should have these decisions made in advance– I will go to the gym because it will make me feel better and fitter and stronger and I will have earned my keep. I need to do the cost/benefit analysis in advance, rather than at the beginning of each act.

Cleaning up:

I should always clean up after dinner, etc. I hate seeing dishes in the sink, it just makes me feel sloppy and disgusting. I like living and working in clean spaces. To my credit I think I do this more often than not. But usually if I don’t do it it’s because I postpone it to a mythical later. Postponing things is one of my greatest tragedies.

Time-before-sleep:

If I don’t plan anything, we tend to just sit on our computers and browse nonsense on the internet. Sometimes we go out or watch a movie if we make plans, but they don’t happen nearly as much as they ought to.

Finally, I ought to do a review of the day every night before I go to bed. And a word vomit, if anything’s on my mind. And then I should wind down with a book and go to bed. I should leave my phone and laptop outside.