Do You Have A Favorite Time of Day To Write? (And What Happens If You Miss It?)
July 14, 2011
Do you have a favorite time of day when you like to write your blog posts or other online content? What happens to you when you can't write during that time?
Yesterday (Wednesday) morning, I found myself just a bit jittery in the morning and seemingly out-of-sorts. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on... and then it hit me:
I was missing out on my "normal" writing time!
You see, my wife is recovering from breast cancer surgery and during this period she can't do things like, oh, lift up our 2-year-old daughter and change her diaper! Or simply hold our 2-yr-old if she falls ... or just wants to be held. (Needless to say, this is immensely frustrating for my wife!) Or reach up into kitchen cabinets to get plates or glasses. Nor can my wife drive right now with her limited range of motion.
The result is that for this week my mornings prior to 9am have been spent getting both kids ready and off to camps or friends. (Our 9-year-old has been in a day camp and our 2-yr-old has been visiting each day with friends or family.) Plus all the other typical morning activities in a household.
Now, don't get me wrong... I am definitely glad to help in doing all this. My wife has been making an amazing recovery and each day she's getting better and better. It's no big deal for me to do what I'm doing to help her out - and I'll keep doing it as long as she needs me to do so.
What I didn't expect was the disruption to my own habits by starting my work day one hour later.
Here's the deal... for years now I have always started my formal "work day" around 8:00 am. And yes, I'm often checking email and Twitter, etc. before that time... but 8am has generally been the time when I go "into my office".
And what's the first thing I do when I go into my office?
Write!
Indeed, I have formally blocked off 8-9am every morning on my calendar as "Blogging Time". It is a time when I try my best to just FOCUS on writing.
Before getting sucked into the zillion Skype group chats that are part of my IM-centric company.
Before getting sucked into my email inbox.
Before getting sucked into the mega-timesuck that is Twitter/Facebook/Google+/whatever.
Before getting sucked into whatever Voxeo projects are on my plate for that particular day.
Before any of that... I try... to just spend an hour where I'm entirely focused on writing.
Typically my focus is on cranking out at least one post for Voxeo's many blogs and then often a post for one of my many other blogs. My goal is to try to always have a queue of posts that will be going out over time to keep content flowing out online. (Confession: right now with everything going on, I don't! My queue of written posts is empty - tons of ideas, no text!) Sometimes my focus is on an article for some other site... regardless, I try to spend that time writing.
Sometimes that block of time stretches on beyond an hour... maybe it turns into a couple of hours. Sometimes it winds up only being 15 or 20 minutes before something high priority interrupts the time.
This week, though, I haven't had that block of time in the mornings. And to my chagrin I've found that this does have an effect on me. :-(
Now, the effect on me will be temporary as next week we don't have quite the same schedule of camps and such and I'll probably be able to resume my early writing block. And if it's not next week it will be the week after.... or somewhere in here as my wife keeps getting better. So I'm not too concerned in the grand scheme of things.
But this whole episode has made me realize just how important that little block of time has become to me!
How about you? Do you have a favorite time of day to write? Have you formally blocked out a period of time? Or do you just try to catch some time when you can? Does it bother you when you can't write?
Image credit: kobiz7 on Flickr
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