Newsletter 24 April 2020
Adjusting to staying home or working from home is a challenge. I went through that adjustment when I retired, nearly four years ago.
I was fairly good at time management and productivity within the framework of a work schedule (weird as that schedule was: two night shifts a week and alternate Saturdays). When that framework went away, I had to learn new ways to get things done.
The most helpful thing I learned was to structure my time by activities rather than by schedule. I have a short list of things I want to accomplish each day; when to work on them is flexible. This is the antithesis of the way I worked at the Library—there my most important activities were scheduled: storytime on Mondays at 1 pm, attend a meeting 2-4 pm, Info Desk duty from 6-9 pm, that sort of thing.
By focusing on tasks rather than schedules, I can work around the messy events of an ordinary day: a bad night of sleep, a call or text from a friend, a special project that comes without warning, all that sort of rot.
For example, when first retired, I had a daily goal of writing for two hours in the afternoon. After months of missing that goal more often than not, I changed it to write x number of words per day. That worked a little better, but there was still room for improvement. Now I've assigned specific writing projects to specific days of the week. My Monday goal is to write 250-750 words on my review column; Tuesday to do the same amount on my in-progress memoir; etc. I'm doing so much better.
That's what works for me. If you're finding the transition to a home-based life challenging, try structuring your day by tasks instead of schedules. Let me know if it works for you.
- Reached November 1996 in my cataloging of Legion of Super-Heroes comics
- Scanned 30+ books
- Scanned another box of old mail
- Added 500 words to my memoir
- Wrote 300 words on Hunt for the Dymalon Cygnet
- Worked on the next gay erotic short story
- Working on The Rule of Five episode 2.20
A vision from the past: Thomas and Don at Farpoint in 2011.
This week I focused on my Legion of Super-Heroes website. I'm cataloging 60+ years of Legion comics—my long-range goal is to do a year's worth of comics every two months. I'm running a little behind, so I decided to go into high gear and finish up the year 1996 by the end of April (that would put me back where I wanted to be). To make it extra-challenging, 1996 was a big year for the Legion, with many guest appearances, crossovers, and tie-oin books: in November alone, there are 13 separate Legion-related comics. (In a normal month, there are 1 or 2.)
I've been having a wonderful time re-reading these stories, many of which I haven't revisited since they first came out.