(This one took a couple of tries to iron out…)
After I got to Japan, I had trouble sorting out the best way to schedule my creative work time—like, a lot of trouble. I finish work at 4:00 every day and get home soon after that, so it seemed pretty simple to walk in the door, throw down my bag, and get right to work on the novel, right?
Negative.
Looking back, I wasted a lot of time when I first got here, especially in the afternoons between 4:00 and 5:30, when I’d come home, plop down on my bed, and scroll through my phone or listen to a podcast for longer than I intended. I was also losing a lot of time after dinner to inactivity (staring into space, scrolling through my phone, excessive Youtube watching, etc.), and a lot of the time I was devoting to my work…wasn’t as productive as it could have been.
Over the last few weeks I’ve identified a few things that made it harder to sort out a real routine:
- I was exhausted after the move to Japan and still had to settle into my new job, which put me into a state that I’ll euphemistically refer to as less than focused (!!!).
- I had a lot of new apartment/relocation stuff to do—everything from buying a gas burner to setting up wire transfers to cleaning out my clogged shower drain. These things not only took up a lot of time, but they often had to be done right away, which threw off my routine even more.
- Because I work at different elementary schools around my city and walk or bike depending on the weather, my commuting time is different every day and I get home anywhere from 4:05 to 4:30, or later if I decide to run errands after work. The daily variance was making it hard to develop a consistent routine.
- I was following WAY too much political news, which was having adverse effects on both my attention span and my sense of optimism for the future.
Fortunately, identifying these issues has been the first step toward solving them, and since the New Year began I’ve been figuring out more of what works and what doesn’t. That’s why I’m finally ready to unveil my…
Brand-Spanking New Afternoon & Evening Creative Work Schedule!
Here’s a reminder of what my day looked like at my last office job:
7:50am – Wake up
9:00am–6:00pm – Day Job Work
6:20pm – Get Home
6:20~8:00pm – Unwind, cook dinner, eat, wash dishes.
~8:00~11:00pm – Creative work time
~11:00pm~12:00am – End of the night unwinding, reading, and sleep
Then, after I left that job and freed up three months of my time before Japan, my schedule looked like this:
~8:00am – Wake up
~8:00~9:00am – Read
~9:00~10:00am – Shower, eat breakfast, get ready
~10:00am~1:30pm – Creative work time (more intensive)
~1:30~3:00pm – Take a walk, eat lunch, run errands (if needed)
~3:00~7:30pm – Work on other, less intensive creative projects/life stuff
~7:30pm – Cook and eat dinner
After Dinner – Clean up unfinished To-Do items, read, relax, go out and do something social, etc.
Obviously this schedule not only left me with WAY more time to focus on my own work, it gave me more freedom to choose when I wanted to work on different kinds of projects—for example, I always worked on my novel in the morning when I was more focused. This was pretty excellent, of course…but the downside was that it made it that much harder to go back to a Day Job schedule :-(
With all that in mind, here’s what I’ve come up with for my Japan job:
6:30~7:00am – Wake up (varies depending on the day)
8:00am–4:00pm – Day Job Work
4:05~4:30pm – Get Home
[Take 10~30 minutes of unwinding time, depending on how I’m feeling]
~4:20~7:00pm – Creative work time (more intensive)
[Take 30 minutes~1 hour for dinner]
~7:45~9:00pm – Work on other, less intensive creative projects/life things
~9:00~10:45pm – Unwinding, reading, and sleep
As you can see, I’ve used the ~ symbol a lot here, which means that every day I play a lot by ear rather than sticking to a strict schedule. The reality of my life now is that every day looks different based on when I get home, how I’m feeling, and what I have to do. This requires me to be flexible depending on how the day goes, including the weather (for example, if it rains and I have to walk to work, or if I get soaking wet on the ride home and I have to take some dry-off time).
These variables were REALLY hard to adjust to at first, but now that I’ve been in Japan more than six months, they’re getting way easier.
So, How’s it Going So Far?
The answer is, actually, pretty well. Building flexibility into my work schedule makes me feel less bad when things go awry and I don’t sit down to work until 5:00, and helps me deal with problems that come up on short notice (sudden illnesses, running out of milk, etc.).
I also find myself prioritizing my work based more closely on deadlines than I did back home: for example, if I have two projects to work on, one due in 5 days and the other due in 7 days, I used to work on whichever one I felt like working on based on my mood. Now, though, with less time and more variables to juggle, I find myself choosing the project with the closer deadline every time so I can check it off and keep a trimmer to-do list.
The overall best news is that most days I’m able to harness more after-work time (3.5~4 hours) for creative work than I could at my office job (where I had 3 hours max). This is not only because I spend less time at my current job (8 hours vs. 9 hours, including lunch breaks), but my commuting time is equal or less most days, and I never have to stop for gas after work ;-)
Whereas at my office job I also used to take every Friday off from creative work, because I get back home so much earlier in Japan, it feels like no big deal to take an hour or two on Fridays to get some work done before dinner, which means I’m harnessing even more time every week.
Finally, as far as weekends go, I still try to take Saturdays off to clear my head by reading, seeing friends, or just plain relaxing. I’ve also been seeing a lot of cool places in Toyama, like the sweet day trip I took to Kurobe Gorge with some friends in the fall.
More Challenges Ahead
Don’t get me wrong, not every day goes perfectly—last week I had an exhausting, rough day and came home from work too tired and off my game to do anything but eat Japanese Pringles and scroll through Twitter, and only managed to cut some of my losses by salvaging ninety or so minutes of work time later in the night. That, of course, sucked, but in the grand scheme of things, it happens.
I think my next step is going to be prioritizing and simplifying my workload so that I’m spending more time doing actual writing and less time doing everything else, and I’ll definitely keep you posted on that. As I move forward, though, I’m still feeling pretty good about the new schedule :-)
So I totally have an Instagram now where I post cool and offbeat pics from Japan—check it out!
Plus, you know, there’s other ways to follow me too…
But I Also Have a Day Job on Facebook
Occasional Email Update List (extra cool stuff ahoy!)
Cover photo cropped and used under CC 2.0 License