[Tracking Every Minute]-Day 13 – Freaky Friday

This post is the thirteenth in the #trackingeveryminute challenge. You can follow along here.

It’s Friday the 13th. I am not superstitious, but I am not looking forward to the day. Well, the day should be fine, but after school I have 10 11 year-old boys coming over to the house and sleeping over. That is 9 more than I am used to.

My daughters were so frightened they coordinated sleepovers to escape. I unfortunately, was not allowed to escape. I was needed for chaperoning.

6:00 – 6:30. Lay in bed. I make these entries so that I can keep myself honest. I know that I should be getting out of bed and reading. But somedays it just doesn’t happen.

6:30 – 8:00. Kids morning routine and drop off.

8:00 – 9:30. Got finished with drop off a bit earlier than usual, which gave me extra time with my laptop before working out. Important for today with my day ending at around 2:30.

9:30 – 11:00. Worked out.

11:00 – 1:00. My first and only deep work block of the day.

1:00 – 2:30. The calm before the storm. Went for a quick bite with my wife before we went to pick all of the boys up from school.

2:30 – 9:30. Full on chaperoning of 10, 11 year old boys. There was dodgeball, man hunt, football, basketball, a video game truck. It was all out madness. Did I go to sleep at 9:30, no not really. Boys didn’t go to sleep until 2:00 am or so and were up at 6:30. It was a sleep over after all.

Making the Most of the Time You Have

Today is a great example of lessons I have learned during this #trackingeveryminute challenge. By planning the day out in advance, I knew that I had a short day in front of me. I took advantage of the hour and a half that I had before working out, because, like I learned last week, I had my laptop on me.

So while I only had one focused block of work, I really had closer to 2 because of the time I spent on my laptop before working out.

It’s tempting to skip working out on days like this, but I noticed that I do not feel good if I don’t work out for two days in a row. While I did get a walk in yesterday, I don’t count that as a work out. It was better than nothing, but I know myself well enough that I’d be cranky and discontent if I didn’t get a work out in today. So I did.

Main Takeaways

• 11 year old boys don’t stink yet. Thank god, I had 10 of them in my house.
• I’ll take an hour of a laptop and focused intent over 3 hours of unfocused time. Constraint on time is a great focusing factor.
• Planning ahead reduces the dread of leaving early or finishing work early. It doesn’t sneak up on you. Instead, your whole day is planned around it so when it comes time to finish up, you feel good about the work you have done.

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