Schedules . . .

. . . are wonderful things. Ask anyone I know, they'll tell you of my long and abiding love of Google calendars. I've been using them for years to remember dates, keep track of classes, and so on. As I transition to working at home, I use them to block out chunks of time to work on my intern duties. 

However, I have learned that it may work for some people to block out the same chunks of time every week and get into a set routine, this by no means works for me. I usually ignore the red chunks, and if a shift of the day job gets scheduled over intern time, i tend to just ignore the intern time and not reschedule. Then I get to the end of the week with a lot of work left and doing crazy college kid-type behaviors to cover for lost time. 

So I have come to the conclusion that I need to spend at least an hour every week scheduling times -- they're fresher in my mind, and even if one does succeed with a set schedule, I think this time could still be valuable. Here's why: because you need time to plan a road map for the week. 

Here's what my scheduling process looks like:

I have a set morning routine I do every (sort of) day. I'm getting meaner with myself on this, as I have been having a horrid time of waking up. It consists of: get up, go take my meds and start coffee, (and since I have to wait    after taking them before I can eat) "work out" -- about five minutes of stretches, crunches and leg excersizes, and one or two dance-y or kickbox-y routines, then eat breakfast, shower, and do the dishes and/or laundry if I forgot the night before.  I will skip the mini-work out if I have the morning shift, and have been really bad about skipping it in general, but it really helps me wake up and start the day productively.

Then for work, I have a master list of tasks and some tentative deadlines set out. I update these every week, and based on conversations with my boss, know what to focus on. I take the high-priority tasks for the week and break them into mini-tasks. I then schedule out my blocks of time on Google, with the tasks I need to complete within each block, including any maintenance-type things I have to do weekly. Knowing what all I can do in what time is becoming easier to me as I go on.  

I really like this system, especially since in my lapse from it I forgot just how much a little time each week can help me really focus myself and make it easier for me to know what to do efficiently. And I know everyone has their own ways for working at home, but I hope others will find this information useful. 

Gold start to the people with the guts to work from home (as you know, it's harder than you'd guess).