Daily Routine

I'm trying out a new concept and a new piece of software to support that concept...

I'm sure you've met people who love their routines. Heck, I've been in our little community long enough that I forget that most of American culture (Western, for that matter) is based on them. Rush hour happens because so many people have the same schedule Monday through Friday. Living out in the forest and setting my own schedule means that I don't have that same sort of structure.

One reason that I'm a weaver is that I like to do the same thing over and over again. How did it take me so long to figure out that I might try applying that to my daily schedule, too?

Well, I'm doing it now and I LOVE it. I've designed a schedule just for me. It takes into account my preexisting tea ritual and the fact that I need more frequent breaks the longer I've been working.

The Daily Routine app lets me create separate routines for different types of days. Office days have fewer working hours and more breaks because it's tougher for me to do brain work for the same amount of time as I put into weaving.

Some of the other types of days have yet to be defined. I just haven't set aside the time to set them up, but I will before the first one of them arrives.

Once the routines are defined, they are then applied to actual calendar days. The method for doing this is a little convoluted, but the beautiful and clear interface makes it pretty simple anyhow. (You can see that I've only been using this since April 17th...)

And once all that input work is done, the app just works. I've told it that all time blocks except sleeping and relaxing should begin by chiming a bell and popping up an alert to tell me what that bell means.

I find that it's making me WAY more productive. Instead of finishing a task and taking a quick break, I look to see when my next break is scheduled and find a task to fill in that time. Fewer unnecessary breaks means that I magically get more done in the same number of studio hours.

I'm especially amused at this last image disclosing my personality type. "11 hours and 19 minutes of fun left." That phrase seems to just suck the fun right out of it, doesn't it? Well, it doesn't really, not for me. I'm OK knowing that my day off consists of sleeping in until 9:00 and then having 13 hours of fun before bed. And since I'm so much more productive in the rest of my days, I've decided to take two days off every month for a while and see how I like it.