Persephone's Sunday Wrap Up

Hey y'all!  After an intense weekend of studying Business Law and Ethics, I am happy to say I passed my final assessment (and the class) with flying colors! 

Part of the impetus for this blog and the lifestyle changes I hope to achieve and chronicle stem from the fact that I want to be successful in school.  This would not be a challenge in and of itself, but I have a very intellectually demanding job, and work gets my priority brain power and effectiveness hours. 

In order to be successful in school, I need to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of both my brain and my body in order to have enough stamina to devote as much of my focus after work hours to school as I do to work during work hours.  That was an awkward sentence, but whatevs.

As it is, I usually feel pretty brain fried after a full work day, especially when you factor in all of my appointments and stuff.  Hence the need for gradual but sweeping life changes, with a focus on effective life management.

I managed to write the new evening routine, and I plan to implement it tonight.  I also slightly revised the morning.  I present the following:

Night

Ø  Physical Therapy Routine

Ø  Set up writing assignment

Ø  Shut down office

Ø  Pocket stuff on breakfast bar – wallet, keys, sunglasses, charms

Ø  Gather purse and other items for work by front door

Ø  Shut down living room

Ø  Smoothie prep – blender assembled and ready, glass clean, ingredients measured

Ø  Tea prep – kettle on burner with water, tea picked, glass with spoon and sweetener

Ø  Grab a drink for med taking

Ø  Shut down kitchen

Ø  Brush teeth / wash face / take night meds / make sure med holder is on bathroom sink

Ø  Shut down bathroom

Ø  Pick out clothes for the next day and lay them on the edge of the bed

Ø  Arrange make-up for the next morning

Ø  Make sure bedside table has book and glasses for morning

Ø  Check / turn on all alarms

Ø  Go to bed

Morning

Ø  Alarm goes off

Ø  Read for 15 minutes

Ø  Second alarm goes off

Ø  PT Routine / Stretching

Ø  Shower

Ø  Get dressed

Ø  Take morning meds

Ø  Make smoothie / immediately clean blender

Ø  Start hot water for tea

Ø  Dry my hair (while drinking smoothie)

Ø  Add sweetener and tea bag to tea

Ø  Writing assignment (while drinking smoothie)

Ø  Make-up

Ø  Finish prepping tea

Ø  Grab stuff and leave

I'm interested in hearing from others what your routines are, if you have them, and if you don't, do you see value in adopting one?  Would it help if I linked to some more articles about it?

-Seph

Someday, Abby, you will actually DO this routine thing.

I timed my morning routine on Tuesday, and it went like this:
Shower and medicine- 15 minutes
Morning ablutions - 7 minutes
Get dressed - 8 minutes
Breakfast - in the car on the way to the therapist...and my husband made it for me.  I got there EARLY!

I totally cheated on breakfast, but the rest took me a half hour.  I was blown away.  You see, normally I get up an hour before work, and I'm 5-10 minutes late just about every day.  On occasion I get up an hour and a half before work, I'm right on time, and I actually get to eat breakfast.  "What the heck is going on?" asks me.
Experiment time!

This morning I got up at 7:30 AM when I had to be at work by 8:30 AM.  Plenty of time, since once again my lovely husband made me breakfast.  You can be jealous, it's alright. ;)  I was 10 minutes late.  How, you ask?  I shall tell you.

I hadn't done my evening routine.  I had decided in my brain what to wear to work, but hadn't set it out.  It took me at least an extra 15 minutes just to find socks that matched.  (Don't ask.)  My purse and work tote weren't near the bedroom door, so I lost 5 minutes hunting them down.  That's 20 minutes.  It takes 10 minutes to get to work.  Traffic sucked.  There went all my extra time.

Lesson learned:  evening routine = timely arrival in the morning.

On that note, I am going to get some sleep.  I have a long day of eating and watching the new Muppet movie ahead of me.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Abby

P.S.  Seph, I am thankful for your friendship and for encouraging me to overcome my blog fright.  <3

Abby - The nightly routine results are in!

I finally timed my nightly routine.  Victory is mine!  Here are my findings.

Pick tomorrow's outfit - 10 minutes 30 seconds
Gather all I need for the day into one place - 1 minute 15 seconds
Evening ablutions - 9 minutes 55 seconds
Put on pajamas - 1 minute
Pack lunch - N/A (Husband is making it for me this time)
Read - N/A (I will allot 30 minutes and set a timer)
Blog - About 15 minutes today, however I'll allot 1 hour, and do extra reading/net browsing if I get done early.

Evening routine total time: about an hour and 15 minutes + 15 estimated minutes to pack a lunch =
an hour and a half.

So, if I plan to be in bed by 11 PM,and I want to be up in the morning by 7 AM, then I need to start my routine at 9:30 PM.  I will also attempt to keep away from my netbook until designated blog time.  I lose track of time way too easily while on the internet.

Abby Says - I want to be a Time Lord

One of the most annoying problems for me is my inability to manage time.  It is a symptom of ADHD, and something I've been struggling with my whole life.  I remember writing my entire high school term paper at 2 AM the night before it was due and getting an A.  I used to be proud of that.  Now I realize that's just messed up.

It doesn't have to be this way.  The first thing I need to do is figure out how long it actually takes to do things.  According to my awesome book, More Attention, Less Deficit:  Success Strategies for Adults with ADHD (hereafter known as MALD), people with ADHD are time blind.  We just don't see time and future consequences clearly.  We understand the theory, we just have trouble getting it to work.  One of the suggestions to help with this problem is to actually time how long it takes to do common activities and write it down for future planning purposes.  This way I can avoid the temptation to convince myself that I'll do it faster the next time.

So I've grabbed my Life Improvement Notebook (LIN) and am writing down everything I do to get ready for bed.  Tonight I'll time how long each part takes.  I'll do the same for my morning routine and report the results tomorrow.

Ta!

Abby

Abby says - Evening Routine

10:00 PM:  Pack tomorrow's lunch.
10:15 PM:  Lay out tomorrow's outfit.
10:30 PM:  Blog in bed
11:00 PM:  Sleepytime


Am I forgetting anything?

Persephone Says - Baby, it's 3am and I'm lonely

First of all, did y'all know that Mr. Rogers had a morning routine?  The link takes you to a great article about Mr. Rogers, and if you look at #3, you'll see his morning routine.

As for my morning routine, it looks like the minor tweaks to my routine really helped.  I managed to get through the whole routine in 90 minutes this morning instead of the two hours it took me yesterday.  So, I think that tomorrow I will stick w/ the 5:45a wake-up call, instead of moving it to 5:30a and see how it goes.  It's all fine and dandy starting this on a weekend, but tomorrow is the true test.

I have a confession to make:

Yesterday, after doing the whole morning routine, including being fully dressed and wearing make-up, I went to sort laundry and fell back asleep for almost three hours!!  It was totally on accident, and I am not worried it will happen on a workday, but it was really bizarre to just conk out after so much prep time.

Writing:

If you've read my morning routine, you know I have a writing component in there.  I decided that I can't just sit down to a blank page, at least not these first few days, so what I've done this weekend is to write down the day/date, a quote (QOTD), and then ask myself 3 questions. 

Then, in the morning, I answer the questions.  For example, here's what my notebook looked like this morning:

Day / Date - Sunday, November 13, 2011

QOTD:  I believe that everyone comes from pain and a certain amount of dysfunction. - Mariel Hemingway

1) How is day two going?

2) Thoughts about "Room":

3)  List three successes from the past week  & three goals for the day:

I will spare y'all the answers to the above, I just wanted to put the structure out there for anyone else who might find it helpful.

And on that note, I have goals to accomplish.  See you on Tuesday!