What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
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Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#2I can recommend the practice; for the last few years, I've gone to bed around 10pm every night, and gotten up at five before heading to work around nine. (Adjust to taste depending on your sleep needs; the important point is to give yourself a few hours to yourself in the morning.)
In practice, this means moving discretionary time from last thing in the day to first thing, and I think there's great value in that. After all, the things we do with our discretionary time - don't we do them because they matter to us? Certainly I do! And I've found that starting my day with them, when I can approach them with a fresh mind, both improves my ability to pursue those avocations, and gives me a better platform on which to begin a day of work than scrambling to do everything at the last minute has ever done.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#3I can recommend the practice; for the last few years, I've gone to bed around 10pm every night, and gotten up at five before heading to work around nine. (Adjust to taste depending on your sleep needs; the important point is to give yourself a few hours to yourself in the morning.) In practice, this means moving discretionary time from last thing in the day to first thing, and I think there's great value in that. Aft…
I've heard repeatedly if you have some side project you really care about, do it before work, not after.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#4I can recommend the practice; for the last few years, I've gone to bed around 10pm every night, and gotten up at five before heading to work around nine. (Adjust to taste depending on your sleep needs; the important point is to give yourself a few hours to yourself in the morning.) In practice, this means moving discretionary time from last thing in the day to first thing, and I think there's great value in that. Aft…
For me at least (speaking hypothetically, since I haven't tried this), that seems like it would fly in the face of "get your work done so you can play without it hanging over your head." And it means that (if I have a fairly hard work start time) I am watching the clock the whole time I'm using discretionary time, whereas doing it after work means I can just go until I'm tired, without really worrying about the clock.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#5Habit is a really powerful thing when applied over the course of our lives and the truth is that people tend to follow habits most at the start of their days. If there is something you want to do every day (read, work, exercise, relax) do it in your morning and it will become a habit.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#6Is it just me or is this article also paywalled for you when you click web => WSJ article? If so, is there another way to read it other than paying for a subscription? I don't read the WSJ often enough to justify subscribing.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#7I can recommend the practice; for the last few years, I've gone to bed around 10pm every night, and gotten up at five before heading to work around nine. (Adjust to taste depending on your sleep needs; the important point is to give yourself a few hours to yourself in the morning.) In practice, this means moving discretionary time from last thing in the day to first thing, and I think there's great value in that. Aft…
I've heard repeatedly if you have some side project you really care about, do it before work, not after.
That definitely works for me. I’ve tried to work on side projects after my daily job but I often got home drained and with zero will to code anything. Since then I started moving this time into my mornings, before work. It definitely feels short and like you’re on a time constrain more than the evenings, but I’ve made progress on my projects like this, bit by bit.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#8Is it just me or is this article also paywalled for you when you click web => WSJ article? If so, is there another way to read it other than paying for a subscription? I don't read the WSJ often enough to justify subscribing.
WSJ removed Google users' access to articles, so the web link doesn't work for them anymore.
Now the only way to view a WSJ article for free is if you're referred through Facebook, I believe.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#9Is it just me or is this article also paywalled for you when you click web => WSJ article? If so, is there another way to read it other than paying for a subscription? I don't read the WSJ often enough to justify subscribing.
The web links work for me when you copy them to an Incognito tab.
Re: What’s the rush? The power of a slow morning
#10I can recommend the practice; for the last few years, I've gone to bed around 10pm every night, and gotten up at five before heading to work around nine. (Adjust to taste depending on your sleep needs; the important point is to give yourself a few hours to yourself in the morning.) In practice, this means moving discretionary time from last thing in the day to first thing, and I think there's great value in that. Aft…
For me at least (speaking hypothetically, since I haven't tried this), that seems like it would fly in the face of "get your work done so you can play without it hanging over your head." And it means that (if I have a fairly hard work start time) I am watching the clock the whole time I'm using discretionary time, whereas doing it after work means I can just go until I'm tired, without really worrying about the clock…
The work will be there either way. So I can choose to work first and come home worn out from that and then try to do things I care about, or instead to do things I care about first, that don't wear me out, and carry a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with me to work.
And, I mean, I'm not trying to finish a story before work - not from scratch, certainly. My current story is around 20k words right now, and it's somewhere between a quarter and a third done. I wouldn't get it done in one day if I had every minute to myself! And it'd be no good if I did. But if I can add a few hundred words, or a few dozen that cover a point that's been giving me trouble, or just a few pages of notes in my diary on where the plot's going to go at a given point - and I can do that in a morning - then that's enough.
I think that distinction between finishing and doing might make a difference here - if I thought about it in terms of the former, it'd only frustrate me because I'd run out of time. Thinking about it in the latter terms makes it a question of deciding and finding out how much progress I'll make today.
I don't know if that's how it works out for everyone, and it's anyone's guess whether it'll still work the same for me once I get an elliptical trainer into my apartment and start going ham on that every day. But this is how it's worked for me, thus far.