I’m about to head into a few days of being cooped up at home. It’s shitty outside today, and I’m dropping my car off tonight to the mechanic for the inspection tomorrow. They said it would take a couple days, so I’m without transport for a bit.
It’s going to be the perfect time to really go through and get rid of the many things that I won’t need going forward. I usually don’t have a problem once I get going, it’s just the starting that’s the issue.
I’ve learned so much about myself and how I work best, it’s incredible to me how productive I can be in a short period of time when I’ve created the right circumstances:
- eaten food recently
- drink nearby (should be water)
- not too cold (stimulants being vasoconstrictors, my fingers and toes get cold very easily)
- background noise AKA “body double time”
- lo-fi instrumentals when I need to think – like now
- podcasts, audiobooks, or continuous episodes of a TV show that I know well enough that I don’t have to actively watch it
This thing that works incredibly well for me is called “body doubling“. Kate and I can sometimes coordinate times during the week that we can help each other with this. We’ll get on a video call, say hi for a couple minutes, then we both mute and get to work! It’s nice to share little looks or make funny faces with each other and we both have the opportunity to really focus and get a lot of work accomplished in our time together. Obviously I can’t do this all the time, and that’s where the music, or tv show in the background are crucial.
I finally cleaned up the broken glass from the lightbulb I smashed, and I cleared a big area so I can empty boxes and see everything that I have before sorting. See, there is a perfect example. I discovered that I broke that bulb at least two weeks ago, but the thought of moving everything on the table and the floor to try and find bits of broken glass was completely overwhelming for me. How was I going to pick up the tiny pieces, I could vacuum them, but then wouldn’t they damage the inside of the vacuum? I would have to figure out how to pick it up a different way, and I tried a few, and they didn’t work, so I went back to googling about the vacuum….this is the way that my brain works.