For the next couple of weeks I will start my day at 10am and end it at 2am. In one hand I think it’ll be easier to wake up due to my normal tendencies. On the other I’ll loose precious sunlight. It’s winter in the northeast of the US and the days are short.

Taken from Reddit

Mourning routine

I’ve read many advices about how important it is to wake up early and have a morning routine. I believe in routines. Having a routine in place will save you mind energy that you would otherwise use making decisions on what to do.

I find that my morning routine keeps me balanced and less anxious. It forces me to calm my horses when all I want to do is go from 0 to 100 real quick.

I take forever to get out of bed and when I finally do, my day starts like a race to make up for lost time. Having tasks and appointments scheduled later in the day will allow me to wake up without the anxiety of “I should’ve accomplished x, y and z by now.” I am keeping my morning routine. But it will start at 10am, when I wake up.

Plan week not days

Some things are better if done religiously on the same time. Sleep, daily routines and meals. Everything else is scheduled differently everyday. Even my work schedule varies daily.

Down with the 9–5 regime! Caveat: Thou Shalt Overlap.

Everyday has it’s own demands thus I keep strict blocked times to a minimum.

Avoid switching gears

There are multiple areas of your life pulling for your attention at any giving moment. Responsibilities, work, health, social life, personal growth… the list goes on. With so many things to attend to, we naturally try to multitask. We mashup tasks together and juggle whatever we can to get everything checked off the list. By the end of the day you’re exhausted. But did you make meaningful progress on your most important projects? If you’re anything like me the answer is most often than not: no, not really. Truth is we can’t really multitask.

Earl Miller, professor of Neuroscience at MIT, says for the most part we simply can’t focus on more than one thing at a time. What we can do, Miller says, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.

When we switch gears from on task to another than back we lose momentum. This is specially true for intellectual work. Don’t allow distractions to hijack your train of though.

Meaningful work doesn’t happen in between sets.

When writing, reading or shipping a new feature I need blocks of uninterrupted time. No emails, no push notifications, no phone calls, no IM’s. If you’ve never done this before you might find yourself itching for a distraction and looking at the clock more than you need to. Fight through it, it’ll get easier with practice.