[Tracking Every Minute]-Day 16 – The Half Way Mark

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

Third Monday of the challenge. By this point I know what I have to do if I want to have a good week. I need to make a plan.

It has gotten much easier to plan the day in advance. Its shifted from a chore I feel like I have to do, to a nagging sense I’m missing something. I think that is a sign of progress.

After eating pretty much everything around me this weekend, I planned on fasting today. It just felt like the right thing to do.

6:30 – 9:00. Kids drop off. This took a bit longer than usual, but I had to pickup some things at the market before getting back home.

9:00 – 9:30. Communication block. A must after the weekend. Cleared my inbox and got ready for my first deep work block of the day.

9:30 – 11:30. Deep work block. I’ve started moving my phone out of my work area when I am working. I noticed that I would habitually grab my phone every 15 minutes or so. I think when I got bored, I was reaching for entertainment. Most times I was able to catch myself and put it down, but if there is a notification or something that prompted my action I would get sucked down a rabbit hole.

11:30 – 12:30. Light walk and reading. I don’t want to push exercise too much as I am fasting.

12:30 – 4:00. This was a second deep work block.

4:00 – 6:30. Took my son to soccer practice.

6:30 – 7:30. A solid hour of work after practice.

7:30 – 8:30. Dinner. I am still fasting, but hung out with the family as they ate.

8:30 – 9:30. Closed out the day with another work session.

Fasting

It was a weekend full of food and fun. I typically eat pretty well, but we had my sons birthday on Friday and Saturday morning. The food was standard 11 year old fare. Then went to dinner with friends on Saturday night and a fancy anniversary dinner on Sunday night.

I felt gross by the end of it. Not eating on Monday felt like the easiest way to ensure that I got back on track. I had water and coffee, but that was it.

This made me think about how I did absolutely no work from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. It was a work fast. I realize that this is how most people spend the weekend. But I will always try to sneak in some work any moment that I can. It is a continual sense of not being done.

This is probably not a good thing.

I am not sure if I am going to go as far to start practicing a screen free Saturday or digital detox, but I probably should make time completely removed from any kind of work.

Main Takeaways

• If I fast when I feel I have overdone it for a few days, what do I do when I feel I am working too much?
• Planning the next day has become second nature. I want to see how much further in advance I can go.