Well-Ordered Chaos » schedules

Keeping it together

Addy — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:17:29 +0000

Have you ever seen the sun look this predatory?

Sometimes, my full-spectrum studio lighting is not a good thing.

I tend to spend a lot of my waking hours at my studio table. I work on art here, and I keep my laptop here, so I’m pretty much here whenever I’m at home.

If I’m watching TV in the evening, I start feeling sleepy at 11 or 11:30, and it’s pretty easy to be in bed by midnight. When I’m working in my studio, not so much. The lights give me enough of a boost that I can do just “one more” coat of paint or glue down “one more” piece in that collage. That, of course, is if I’m paying attention to the time at all, which is no sure thing.

Sunday night I came home at about 11. I’d spent the afternoon and evening in a movie marathon with friends, snacking on things I usually avoid eating, and sitting in a room with the shades drawn. I sat down at my studio table “just to check my e-mail”, and an hour later I was wide awake, unable to think about sleeping. Thanks to my nice, bright, daylit studio, I was up until 5:30 that morning.

Since I got up late the next day, I thought it would be clever to take a reduced dose of my meds so I “could go to bed early”. Ha. I spent the day in a fog, munching on sugary snacks, and was up until 3. Sometimes I forget that my meds actually help me sleep.

I am slowly, slowly getting myself back on a normal schedule.

That was NOT decaf

Addy — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:29:48 +0000

I went to Peet’s Coffee before my art class tonight and ordered a small soy-milk decaf dark chocolate mocha. Yes, OK, I’m one of THOSE people. It was evening, I have trouble digesting milk, and if I had my way the chocolate wouldn’t have had sugar in it at all. So sue me.

Anyway, within ten minutes of finishing it I could tell it wasn’t decaf.

Which is why it’s now 12:52 a.m. and I’m writing this blog post instead of even trying to go to sleep.

Maintaining my schedule is a delicate balance. It’s still a work in progress. As I’ve written before, it’s been difficult to regain my sleep cycle since the days started getting shorter, but I finally did it … only to have my schedule thrown to hell by having to manage a rodent invasion. The rodents have finally been dealt with. Now I’ve got the the time change looming at the end of the week. In six more days, I’ll get an extra hour of sleep, at the cost of a precious hour of daylight in the evening.

Not looking forward to it.

I Hate Disruptions

Addy — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:28:51 +0000

When I was a sophomore in high school, we used to joke about our American History teacher’s compulsive habits. If you moved the stapler, the three hole punch, or the pencil sharpener even slightly out of alignment, he would immediately notice and put them back. For awhile we tried moving them around to mess with him, because these kinds of things are hilarious when you’re fifteen, but he just inevitably and without comment replaced the objects exactly as they had been.

The game quickly ceased to be amusing, and anyway the teacher proved himself to be a pretty cool guy. Eventually I got to know him well enough to remark that he must be an incredibly organized person.

“Oh, not at all,” he said, looking surprised. “You should see my house. The reason why I need everything in its place is because I’m so disorganized.”

At the time, I found it hard to believe that a fellow chaos demon could possibly be organized, at all, ever, in any way. These days, it makes a little more sense. For instance, today my partner asked me to pick up a library book for him. I felt myself getting stressed and irritated and cursey. Dammit, I thought, the library closes at 5:30, and that mean’s I’ll need to leave for my art lesson early, and that will just screw everything up…

Because I get ready to leave for my lesson at 3:30. This allows me time to pack any supplies I need to bring, change into paint clothes, find my shoes and keys, get out the door, and make the 15 minute drive to my student’s house, and be ready to start the lesson at 4. As long as I start getting ready to go at 3:30, I’m fine. Tuesday afternoons. 3:30. That’s it.

If I have to run another errand before my lesson, I need to leave even earlier. How much earlier? I have no idea. When I manage to be punctual, it’s because I’ve figured out the hard time at which I need to start getting ready to leave. This takes a tremendous amount of mental effort, and once I’ve expended that effort, I can’t tamper with it or it the whole system dissolves.

So, today, I tried to get to the library, but in spite of my best efforts I couldn’t start getting ready until 3:30. I didn’t make it to the library, so I’ll have to run a separate library errand tomorrow, which of course is another disruption.

To disrupt my day even further, my partner’s birthday is this weekend, so after my lesson I had to go to the mall, which I hate, to get his present … and as long as I was there, I really needed new bras, because I’ve lost weight and the crappy ones I got at TJ Maxx don’t fit right and I haven’t been fitted properly in years … so I went to Nordstrom, which I’ve heard has expert bra fitters. And it does. But that was another couple of hours, and my whole evening was shot.

Did I mention that I hate the mall?

How to Use Gmail Calendar

Addy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:49:17 +0000

In case you’re not up with the gmail these days, it’s a free, web-based e-mail system with unlimited storage that is run by Google. One of gmail’s many (many) features is its calendar, which you can tweak to your heart’s content. You can create as many calendars as you want — for home and work, for each of your kids — and choose a different color for each of them. You can also set as many reminders as you like in the form of e-mail, text message, and pop-up, as far ahead of the event as you would like.

Using gmail calendar is pretty self-explanatory — just click on the calendar link in your gmail inbox:

The "calendar" feature to the right of "gmail" in the top left corner of your browser. I have highlighted it for your convenience. Don't say I never did anything for you.

When you click on the calendar link, you’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

Click on a time slot to create an event. Go on... all the cool kids are doing it.

To create an event, just click on a day and a time. You can create an event quickly by typing it into the dialogue box that appears. If you want to create an repeating event, click “edit” in the dialogue box. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

The ability to set SMS reminders is one of the most powerful tools in in gmail calendar. Customize them to keep from getting overwhelmed.

If you have a recurring event, click the “does not repeat” tool bar. You’ll be given options to have the event repeat daily, weekly, monthy, MWF, TTh, what have you. If you’d like to set reminders for yourself, customize the e-mail, SMS, and pop-up settings.

I’ve found that the reminders work best when I have the one-day e-mail reminders set only for events for which I have to leave the house. If I need to be somewhere at a certain time, I set an SMS reminder for an hour or 90 minutes in advance, depending on how far I have to travel.

For events that just require task-switching — that is, where I remain at the same location, but need to start doing something else — I found that the 24-hour e-mail notice was actually counterproductive. I found that I simply ignored an e-mail telling me that I was supposed to, say, start doing research 24 hours from now. What was worse, is that I found I started to ignore all e-mail calendar reminders. I’ve found that SMS and pop-ups, set at 30 minutes and 10 minutes in advance, to be the most helpful for task-switching. They provide me with a visual and aural reminder that it’s time to wind down what I’m doing and to go work on something else.

Creating a chore schedule

Addy — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:36:59 +0000

Last week I wrote about making up a gmail calendar schedule, but as you’ve probably already learned, it isn’t enough to just get yourself a gmail account and open up the calendar feature. You have to create a schedule, and then you have to notate it in a way that makes sense to you.

For example, here is my gmail calendar:

My gmail calendar

At the beginning of the summer, I realized that in spite of all the work I’d put into organizing my space, it was getting cluttered and dirty because I wasn’t maintaining it. There are some people in this world who will notice that their space is spawning giant dust bunnies, realize they need to clean, and make time to do it.

I am not one of these people.

I realized that I’d been using my gmail calendar for awhile, and I liked a lot of things about it — it gave me my schedule in nice blocks of color, and I had a number of options to set up reminders of appointments. So why not create a few blocks of time on my schedule called and errands things like that?

Here’s the google document version of the schedule:

Nice and vague.

On the first day that I got a chore reminder, I stood in the kitchen and went, “uhhhhhmmm …”. I knew I was supposed to be doing chores or errands or tasks or … something. I’d gotten a text message that said so. But what was I actually supposed to DO?

After staring at the wall for awhile, I got distracted and wandered away.

I was working with an ADD coach at the time, so at my next meeting with her we talked about my schedule. I told her that I felt overwhelmed by housework when confronted with a vague schedule segment called “chores, errands and tasks”. I knew there was stuff needing to be done, but I was damned if I knew what it was. I honestly don’t know what people do when they clean.

My coach helped me to make a list of housework that needed to be done on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and a quarterly basis:

A bit more specific

We eliminated “errands” from that part of the schedule, because they varied too much to fit neatly into one hour chunks. Then I went home and decided what chores to do on what days:

Monday: vacuum kitchen area, mop food prep area, clean microwave

Tuesday: vacuum main room, clean bathroom, put away clean laundry

Friday: vacuum bedroom, wash bedsheets, put away clean laundry

My Monday chore calendar block looks like this:

Monday Blues

I get that text in my SMS reminder, my pop-up reminder, and my e-mail reminder if I chose to have one. Now, instead of getting a text that tells me to do “chores”, which sends my brain off into outer space, I get a text that tells me exactly which chores to do.

so very tired

Addy — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:05:21 +0000

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been sluggish the last few days, and today I’ve just been exhausted. Maybe it’s the days getting shorter. I definitely felt better when I was working in my studio with my full-spectrum lighting.

Today I was supposed to spend an hour on chores, a few hours doing online stuff, and several hours on music and art. The chores just completely slipped my mind (I was charging my phone, so I didn’t get the SMS reminder and got distracted by a book I was reading). I did get the internet work done, and spent a few hours in the studio, and now I’m off to work on music stuff. And then to bed, at a reasonable hour, hopefully to sleep long and deeply.

Time Management, Day 3

Addy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:55:43 +0000

On Monday I sat down and made myself a new schedule on my gmail calendar. Have I mentioned how much I love my gmail calendar? I’ve got it set to give me reminders via e-mail, SMS, and pop-ups at various times. I also have nice color coding of my activities:

My gmail calendar

But, yesterday morning I overslept, meaning it was noon before I ate and got it together enough to get anything done. No chores for me. I was on time for my student, but since I was hungry by the time I got to the grocery store (an errand that shows up below the bottom of the screenshot), I was distracted and it took much longer than it should have. By the time I came home and ate supper, I was hungry and tired, and wound up missing the reminder to go work on art.

Then I got distracted by the internet.

I’m frustrated, but I’m going to try sticking to this for a few days and see what happens. Today has been good so far — worked out, got chores done, writing this post — and now it’s just about time to shift gears and hit the studio.