Good news and bad news. First the bad: It’s 11:32 PM, yuck! Now the good: I read 80 pages (40 of god particle, 40 of red mars) earlier today, so I only have 80 left (ringworld and buddhism: plain and simple). Already quite tired! Gonna get to Ringworld now.

I got through ten pages of Ringworld before I fell asleep.

I think that I’ve been saying “don’t start past eleven PM”, thinking that means I can do 50% before eleven, and 50% after. A better rule might be “be done before eleven PM”.

Another trend I’m noticing: when I’m sitting on my bed (or couch) trying to work, I fall asleep. It’s that simple. When I’m at work, or in the subway, or at a coffee shop, or on a bench or a sidewalk, I get my work done. For future reference in all endeavours, I need to keep myself away from my house if I’m going to be awake.

This poses a little bit of a problem. Where should a person be if not in their home, when doing personal work? I don’t want to “hang out” in the subway. There are no coffee shops open at 11 PM nearby that would allow me to sit in them reading. And staying at work extra late every night isn’t healthy either.

Aha! I made the mistake of forgetting my information about “when I work” when considering “where I work”. I should not be working at 11 PM. So that means I could be at the office, or at a coffee shop, or on my way home in the subway. Rather than looking for a 3 hour chunk of time to do all of my work in one spot, things have a far better chance of working out if I try to use (and if necessary, try to make) spare moments in which to work throughout the day.

Perhaps a pomodoro-like technique would help with this. For every X minutes of one task, stop and do Y minutes of another, and then take a short break from work all together. Today seems like a perfect time to try it, because I’ve got floor hockey and a season’s-over celebration this evening when I’d normally try to stuff all of my work.

I think I can synthesize this into 2 rules:

1) There is no work allowed after 11 PM, so be finished by then.
2) Don’t leave work for huge blocks of time. Devote some piece of every hour to your goal.

Let’s see how we fare today!