Rob Barrett

The Importance of Being Punctual

Posted on September 8, 2008 at 1:21am

Last weekend, I sat down and wrote myself a proper work-day schedule and stuck it on the back of the door by my desk. When to go to bed, when to get up, take breaks, start and finish lunch, apply for jobs or do marketing, even time at the end of the work session to do some doodling and throwing down of ideas… the lot.

And although I've not yet been able to complete a full scheduled day yet (my sister was staying at my place all last week), it's made a marked improvement to my productivity. Just knowing when to be up and at the desk and when you're allowed to slack off for 15 minutes makes a huge difference. Just being aware that I have, say, another 45 minutes until a set break time makes it so much easier to carry on rather than just justifying why I should be allowed to stop there and then.

Slightly unfortunately, I was catching up on work tonight and got so caught up in getting it finished that I'm now an hour and a half past my bed time (first time I've had one of those for quite a few years!), so I'm not going to be able to fully keep to the rota tomorrow, but I'm going to continue with it for the time being as an extra way of treating my freelancing more like a job, rather than something I'm doing in the meantime now that I'm looking for a full-time position in the city.

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