I give myself about 8 minutes to write these posts. Not enough time, it must be said, to get into anything of substance. There are a bunch of things sitting in my ideas folder which I really want to get to, but which I know just can't be done in that amount of time. (Though perhaps breaking them into a series of small snapshots? We'll see.)
That time-box makes this work as a sort of 'morning pages', 'here's a thing in my brain right now' habit. Which does cut right to the intent of this blog (sketch out a thought each working day). But it does force things into a certain kind of box.
(I do actually give myself ~5 minutes or so to clean up the post and get it scheduled. But it's a case of 'what can I realistically get down in 8 minutes?')
My morning 'startup' routine works extremely well for me, though it can feel like a bit of a treadmill as well. I generally start my day job work at 9.30am. Prior to that:
- 8.30am I should be at my desk
- I spend up to 15 minutes working on my basic setup checklist (sorting my workspace, writing a paper schedule, spending at least a few minutes reading something, etc.). I set a timer for this.
- When I'm done with that, I add another 15 minutes to the timer and use that to run through my 'admin' routine.
- This means going through my main communications channels and replying where I can.
- Some days, there are some non-daily tasks like going through my email inboxes or my budget.
- Any leftover time has me dive into my Trello board of tasks and work down the list.
- THEORETICALLY I'm done with this by 9am.
- In practice, I often start a bit late, or have something that slightly overruns.
- I use a 'two minute heuristic' for that where practical -- 'can I finish this properly with two more minutes?' If so, do it, if not, just stash what you have for next time.
- Then I set a timer for 8 minutes, snag something from the folder if I don't have something in mind already, then write it.
- (Two minute heuristic still applies.)
- Then I set yet another timer to give me a box in which to read back over it -- briefly -- and get it scheduled on here.
- Then I go make coffee and have ten minutes or so to do whatever before I have to switch back on again.
This means there's not a lot of forward-planning for these shards. For instance, [I wrote about broadly this same thing back in May]|(https://www.georgelockett.com/shards/2022/5/11/morning-startup). But things change, thoughts drift, and you get what's on the top of my brain.
And there's the timer.