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By Sandy, November 29, 2011

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.  ~Benjamin Franklin

I’ve always hated that quote.

It sounds so bossy and goody goody to me. I’ve never been a morning person. Night, when everyone has gone to bed, has always been my time, a time to read, reflect, and rest. I always get my second wind around 10:00 or 11:00 P.M. One of the reasons I went into academia was the possibility of setting my own hours, not being chained to the routine of 8:00-5:00. Because if there is anything I hate more than getting up early, it’s having to get dressed and drive somewhere early.

Recently, I’ve decided to revisit the possibility of getting up earlier. For me, it’s a process of trial and error. I’m finding that I absolutely love getting up at around 7:00, and I’m going to experiment with 6:30. For those of you who have to get up earlier than this for work, I sympathize and apologize if my quaint resolution fills you rage. I offer you this consolation: as a teacher my work is never done. There is always a pile of papers to grade or another class to prep. My inbox is always packed with student emails and advising questions. These things press on me even after I get home from teaching. I often fantasize about having a job that has no homework. A flexible schedule is nice, but it also comes with a price.

6:00 or 6:30 is my ultimate goal, because this will give me about two hours of solid writing time before Oscar gets up. This morning I got up at 6:55 and wrote nonstop for an hour. It was an astonishingly productive time.

Steve Pavlina recommends 5:00 A.M., as do many other self-help gurus, but I find that getting up too early ruins me for the rest of the day. I’m completely exhausted from about 10:00 A.M. on and can barely keep my eyes open after supper. So far, 6:30 is great. I haven’t pushed myself to get up at 6:00 yet, but I will. That, however, will be as early as I go.

I changed my mind for a variety of reasons. Most of the successful writers I know get up before their children. Sylvia Plath called it “the blue hour.” She wrote her best poems between 4:00 and 8:00 A.M. I can see why. I have found that this is really the only time when I can write without interruption, and constant interruption is death to good writing.

There’s another quote from Benjamin Franklin about the early morning. This one I like:

The early morning has gold in its mouth.

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By Sandy, August 18, 2011

I’ve been struggling lately to get done everything I need to get done. I need more time, but who doesn’t? I constantly admonish myself with that old adage, “We all get the same twenty-four hours.” Some people are just better at managing it than I am.

I think having a schedule will help me.

I was recently rereading one of my favorite old self-help books, Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want. The author, Barbara Sher, believes strongly in the power of a schedule. She believes you should schedule everything, including frivolous activities, or what she refers to as avoidance patters. For example, if you tend to surf the internet instead of writing or grading, she believes you should actually write it into your schedule. Pencil in an hour of grading followed by an hour of web surfing. Most of us don’t want to admit to our avoidance patterns, whether it’s napping, reading magazines, playing Facebook games, socializing, or whatever. She writes,

“Setting a definite and regular time for getting certain things done makes it much likelier that you will do them.”

I tend to live, not by a schedule, but by inclination and deadlines. This is a recipe for procrastination, stress, anxiety, and failing to achieve short and long-term goals. That’s because inclination is pretty fickle. For me, it usually goes like this:

1. Collect papers
2. Tell myself I have a week to grade them and so why not get started on reading that new novel I just picked up
3. Stare at pile of papers all week, feeling anxiety in the pit of my stomach as I turn away from the pile and mindlessly read blogs to quell my anxiety
4. Wait until the last possible minute to grade, staying up late, or grading frantically before class begins
5. Lather, rinse, repeat

This is not a healthy cycle.

The idea is, if I have a week to get my grading done, maybe schedule 30-60 minutes each day to grade, followed by the frivolous activity of my choice.

I have a friend who schedules each week and each day, right down to when she wakes up, does dishes, tidies the house, feeds her son, etc. I am full of admiration for this, but it won’t really work for me, because I don’t have a consistent schedule. During the school year, I teach two days a week, have one class online, do drop-in academic advising, and travel to supervise student teachers. Some weeks I see student teachers and some weeks I don’t. Some weeks I have meetings and some weeks I don’t. On certain days, students will call or email asking for an appointment, and if I have time to squeeze them in I will make an effort to do so. Sometimes a colleague or student will drop by to chat.

So, I’m thinking of solving the problem by making a new schedule each week or even each night before I go to bed, blocking out certain times for writing and grading, and not allowing myself to be free during those times. It’s not a perfect solution, but one that I hope will work for me.

I would also love to set aside time to write very early in the morning, and very late in the evening, but this requires a kind of discipline I don’t know if I have. Maybe if I actually write it down, like Barbara Sher recommends, I will be more likely to do it.

How do you manage your time? Do you use a schedule or go with the flow?