I don’t know about you, but around this time of year, I get lots of inspirational emails from online marketers and various business ‘gurus’, some of whom are suggesting ways for me to live my life to be more productive and balanced. I’m all in favour of balance as I’m a bit of a workaholic. Well, if weaving is your life, then what a good reason to be a workaholic!! :^))
I sometimes look at some of these emails and one that struck my eye was from Early to Rise. The editor, Craig Ballantyne, has a regime of getting up at 5 am, doing things to a routine and going to bed at 9pm. I know that getting up early is thought to be the most productive thing to do if you want to get quality work done, and I sometimes do, but the more I thought about these regimes, the more I wondered about how many people try to adopt something that really isn’t in synch with their own body clocks.
Craig gets up at 5am every day, whatever the season. That’s something I can’t do. I’m a seasons person. My body clock works with daylight, so in the summer I’m up bright and early and get loads done with lots of energy. In the winter, my body doesn’t want to get up until it’s light, (just as well we don’t live in the far north!!) and I spend a lot more time thinking than weaving.
I’m also a person who thrives on variety and gets bored with too much routine. I know, we all have a certain amount of routine in our lives, and it takes me around 2 hours in the morning to do my visualisation exercise, get myself washed and dressed, dog walked and breakfasted before I can get down to some quality work. I do try not to look at my emails until later in the day because they can be a great swallower of time, and I do try to do the task that is most important to me first of all. Of course, this can’t always be followed – sometimes you just have to check for an email that you are waiting for, or other stuff arises that just has to be dealt with there and then, but on the whole I do try to focus on the most important thing first. And it is important to put your head down and get on with things rather than procrastinate.
I have tried various ways of organising my day – weaving in the morning, paperwork in the morning, bits and pieces in the morning – and find that some days I am at my weaving best first thing. But sometimes, it’s more important to get the paperwork out of the way so that my mind is freed to concentrate on weaving later. And sometimes you just have to spend a whole section of the day on sending images and filling in application forms.
So for me, it’s horses for courses. I will continue to listen to my body rather than try to discipline myself into a regime that doesn’t give me the versatility that my brain needs to function at my most creative. If I am scheduled to get up at 5am and I wake at 2 with an idea that I just have to try, am I more or less likely to get up and try it if I allow myself to sleep a little later on?
So whilst that kind of regime will work wonders for some people, I think I will give it a miss, and continue to allow the seasons to influence my work patterns, just like farmers, working hardest and longest in the summer and relaxing and thinking more in the winter.