This is Week 36 of a Year of Living Productively
This week I tested whether getting up at 5:00 a.m. could help me get more done. I went to bed at 10:00 p.m., hoping to enjoy these 5 benefits to rising early. For details, scroll to the bottom of last week’s post.
How Rising Early Saved My Sanity This Week
- Helped me make progress on an important project. I was able to get a lot done on the homeschool curriculum I am writing. I felt great about making this a priority.
- Made me feel virtuous. By the time I started school, I felt I had already accomplished so much.
- Wasn’t hard to get up. By day two, I was waking up at 5 on my own. I wasn’t crazy tired at 5 and the extra hour flew by.
How Rising Early Made Me Crazy This Week
- Not in sync with my family. I was not a nice person when the first day, my husband got up too and said, “Hi.” Let’s just say he really thought I was a crab until I explained that I was getting up to have work time alone. He made the adjustment, but nights were tough. On one particular night, our ball team was playing late, and everyone stayed up to watch. I could not get to sleep.
- Mid-morning crashes. I felt great until a few hours after 5. Then I couldn’t think about anything but going to bed. I took naps to compensate, but the morning after my trouble sleeping was a fiasco. I didn’t seem to be able to recover. Caffeine doesn’t agree with me (I love that expression, don’t you?), but I’m sure I couldn’t have drunk enough coffee to feel better after my sleepless night. The extra productivity I gained was lost to fatigue and naps. Would it get better the longer I got up at 5? I didn’t care.
Did Rising Early Help Me Get More Done?
Yes and no. I realized that in general, I am already an early riser, getting up at 6. I have time to exercise on planned days, spend time with my husband and oldest son, and have personal devotions before starting the school day. Getting up at 5 was great for having project time, but the negatives outweighed the positives. The compromise I have made is to get up at 6 and to spend half an hour working before my family members are really in a chatty mood. (In fact, I’m writing first thing in the morning now).
**UPDATE**
I continue to get up at 6 a.m. I do think I could adjust to getting up earlier, but there is no way in this household that I could get to bed before 10 a.m. I have learned that I need 8 hours of sleep to be at my best. I love getting up at 6. I get my most important activities done and feel like even if the rest of the day is a waste, I’ve had a great day.
The Productivity Approach I’ll Be Using for Week 37
This week I’ll be testing computer shortcuts. I am going to adopt several keyboard shortcuts apt to save me the most time.
The concept. I’m pretty computer savvy. And I’m also pretty geeky about productivity. But when it comes to saving time on the computer–where I spend a good portion of my time–I’m pretty dumb. Example. I have a reputation at home for being the Open Tab Queen. If I’ve been sitting at a computer using Chrome, you can bet that (especially prior to Do It Now), I have left a good 25 tabs open. Leaving that many tabs open slows performance down such that closing them all takes forever. At least it does if you’re computer shortcut ignorant like me.
So one day when I faced my 25+ open tabs, I happened to right-click on a tab and discovered that I could close them all at once. Furthermore, I saw that I could close all tabs to the right. Then I got really crazy and figured out that I could move the tabs I was actually using to the same place, making it even easier to use “close tabs to the right.” The amount of time this has saved me is significant. Brainscape wouldn’t be surprised. They assert that simple keyboard shortcuts can save us eight days a year!
That got me thinking. How many other shortcuts are there that would save me time? Turns out, a LOT. Some of them are easy to implement, like the tab closing trick. Others are habits I would need to develop. I’m excited that there’s an app to help you learn the keyboard shortcut habit!
If you’d like to join me this week, here’s what you do. Decide on which computer shortcuts you’d like to adopt this week. Choose a few easy, automatic ones and some that may require habit formation. Make sure that what you choose will be a major time saver based on how you use the computer. Consider trying the free app if you’re an Apple user. Here are some lists of shortcuts and time savers to get you started.
6 Google Chrome Extensions to Help You Get Things Done, 20 Essential Time Saving Chrome Extensions, 6 Computer Shortcuts Every Computer User Should Know, PC & Mac Shortcuts, GMail Shortcuts, Word Time Savers (also Excel at this site), 10 WordPress Plugins That Save Bloggers Time, How to Create Your Own WinKey Shortcuts
To see if computer shortcuts boosted my productivity, click here.
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Here are the links to the productivity hacks I’ve tried so far:
Week 16: David Seah’s 7:15AM Ritual
Week 17: Another Simple and Effective Method
Week 18: Daily/Weekly/Monthly To-Do List
Week 19: Ultimate Time Management System
Week 25: Make it Happen in 10 Minutes
Week 33: David Seah’s Ten for Ten
Week 34: David Seah’s Emergent Task Planner
Week 35: Steve Kamb’s Do It Now
Does it count if I did it before you announced the method of the week? I installed Nostalgy on Thunderbird yesterday. Now I can file things using the keyboard. I renamed a few folders to have unique, easily-typed names, so searches are fast. (It uses any matches, so searching for “zz” finds “misc zz” but the new name doesn’t mess up the sorting.)
Feedly just added several keyboard shortcuts. Not suitable for the tablet, but great for the main computer.
I’m also researching Excel Databases (complete with filters and mail-merges) for next fall’s job as Guild Registrar. The President won’t like it. She wants me to do it in a way that I can teach others, but the person most-likely to get the job next is new to computers.
I say, if a bit of learning now saves me 40 hours (spread over Early Registration, Registration Night, and Invoice Night — 30 classes, with teachers and optional kits, 65 students, and the usual number of changes) , I’m allowed to use it, whether the next person can or not.
I’d say it counts for sure! Sounds like you are going to save yourself a lot of time and can probably teach the new person a few tricks too–especially if you explain the time savings.
I don’t think the next person will be able to use the new tricks. They have no experience with Excel, and very little with Word. The plan so far uses mail merges. They’ll only doing it once, so the time spent learning won’t pay off. And if anything doesn’t go exactly as they learned (if???), they won’t know what to do.
Turns out it won’t save me that much time, either. Data entry is easy enough, and one set of reports is easy (each student’s classes and fees), but I still can’t find a way to automate the other one (each class’s students and number of kits ordered). Ideas welcome. My husband the programmer says, given the reports needed and people needing to update things, paper is the way to go.
Well Cricket, that’s part of the process, too — figuring out when it makes sense to learn shortcuts and when it doesn’t. Sorry they won’t work for that part of your life, but maybe there are others where they will.
Hmm, this sounds interesting! will have to look at some of these. Thanks for all the links, Melanie. I am a big fan of getting up early. I don’t set an alarm but am often up by 4:00. I love those early morning hours – but I think it also depends on the stage of life you’re at. Don’t think I would have loved it when all my kids were home and I was in the thick of homeschooling. Or maybe I would have loved it but I would have been too tired to do it consistently!
I feel exhausted just thinking about getting up at 4 a.m. I do think finding a quiet time of day (whatever that is for you) to work is a great way to get more done. Hope some of the links are helpful to you, Barb. I just had the kids and my husband watch the Bill video again. My husband hadn’t seen it. My youngest walked away leaving his lunch plate on the table when we finished. *sigh*
The worst thing about having 25 tabs open (guilty here too!) is when you hit a button and *poof* they’re all gone and you forget what they were, or hubby accidentally shuts them all down. I love that you’re trying to live more efficiently. I am too, but my life gets so unpredictable (we’re self employed and are always on the road, then nights and weekends with my spirited boy) that I often don’t succeed as well as I’d like. Sounds like early mornings would be good in the short term for you. I would LOVE to get up at 6:15 every day, want to, hubby works late though so it’s hard 🙁 And I LOVE the name of your blog and that top photo. A psychologist praying? I love it!
Steph, it’s nice not to have to worry about the tabs disappearing now that I can choose which ones to shut down automatically. My husband is self-employed and travels sometimes, but we aren’t typically traveling with him. You know, I think we have to do what works well for our families without worrying about what anyone else is doing. I think that’s why I tried that 5 a.m. wake up time. I thought it might be great, but it’s just not a good fit for us right now.
You are such an encourager, Steph. Thank you for taking the time to comment! I love the name of your blog too. I’m off to check it out!
You are so right, what works for someone else doesn’t necessarily work for our family. Every situation is different. Sometimes it takes awhile to figure out just exactly what DOES work for you! You’re welcome! I enjoyed visiting 🙂