More Time Management Advice

A friend messaged who read Half AMillion Words In Nine Months messaged me recently, asking me how I stopped distractions when I am writing. The things that she listed as distracting, were mostly things that could have been avoided with proper organisation. Here's a few tips for saving time and organising your life so you can get the most out of every day:

Plan meals in advance.

I love the CSIRO diet books, because not only are they super tasty, super healthy and extremely varied, but they also include monthly meal plans and weekly shopping lists to make shopping easy.

Depending how much variety you need in your life, you can sit down once and plan 3-4 weeks worth of meals and use that repeatedly, pretty much forever. If you get sick of it, plan a new week and add that to the rotation. Repeat infinitum.

The point is, to have a list of your meals for the week on the fridge. You never again have to wonder what you are going to have for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Just follow the plan.

Online shopping saves time.

If you know what you are eating all month, you should also know your entire shopping list for the week. That makes it easy to buy it all and once and making one trip to the supermarket will save you a lot of time. Save even more time by buying it online and having it delivered to your house. You can choose your delivery time. Time the deliveries with meals that have ingredients that don't keep. EG if you're having fresh grilled salmon on Wednesday night, have your shopping delivered Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

If you are currently driving to the shop 3-4 times a week, once a week delivery will work out much cheaper. The only downside is sometimes certain things aren't available and won't ship with your order. If you need them for that night's meal, you'll be stuck.

Cook meals in advance.

There are literally thousands of recipe websites and blogs and most of them have hundreds of meals you can cook in advance to eat during the week. I like pre-cooking bolognese sauce, shepherd's pies or lasagne then storing it in single serves for lunches during the week. Soup is also good. Each weekend I make my mother quiches for lunch for the entire week and there are even some fantastic 'make in the evening, eat in the morning' recipes for breakfast too, particularly porridge.

Whatever your tastes, you'll be able to find plenty of options online if you look.

Keep a shopping list.

Keep a shopping list in the same place and whenever you realise you need something, get up right away and write it on the list. You might even want to keep the list on your phone, since that is probably always with you. However I like paper lists, because I can give them to other people in the household if they are going to the shop.

I like to separate my list by store. Supermarket, pet store & vet, chemist, etc.

Put your clothes out the night before.

Every night before bed, I think about what I will be doing the next day and lay my clothes out. Then I wake up, fall out of bed into the shower and get dressed. I don't have to make any decisions for the day until I am already clean and dressed and usually breakfast is already in the fridge for me, so I have 45 minutes of unthinking time before I actually have to get active for the day. Don't waste your decision making power on breakfasts, clothes and organising your day--do those things before you go to bed so your first, most important task of the day gets the best you.

Make sure everything in your house has a home.

Every item you own has to have a place in your house it belongs were it is out of the way. That means not on a table or chair, actually in a drawer or cupboard or wherever is appropriate. I also think it's important that similar things are all in the same place. EG: not having bookshelves in different rooms. This can be trickier if you have two bathrooms or different people have their own books, etc and want to keep them in their own rooms.

But at the very least, you need to know where every single thing in your house belongs and if something doesn't belong anywhere, you need to change that.

Put everything in its home once a day.

Once a day, go through every room of your house and put anything that is not in its home, back in its home. This may be hard if your house is a mess to begin with, but once everything is away, you'll find you can only move so many things in a day.

If you have children, teach them all things have a home and have them help you put everything back. Children can do this with their own toys without much supervision from four years of age.

Clean as you go.

To save putting things away from becoming an hour long nightmare every day, get in the habit of taking the extra 30 seconds to put things back when you are finished with them instead of leaving them for late.

Finished eating? Put the plates in the dishwasher. Getting in the shower? Put your clothes in the hamper while you are naked, don't leave them on the floor for later. Interrupted from reading? Put the book back on the shelf rather than leaving it on the couch for later. You'll find your possessions get damaged less often this way too.

Answer emails once a week.

I check my emails once a day and delete anything I don't have to reply to. However unless something is really urgent, I leave it in my inbox until the end of the week, then make a point of completely clearing it out all at once.

Set alarms for the things you forget.

For me, this is drinking water, exercising and medication. For you, it might be preparing breakfast for tomorrow, getting off the internet or turning off the TV, meditation or feeding the pets (my pets are their own alarm, but maybe yours are more apathetic). Anything you need to do every day, or certain days of the week, you can set an alarm for so you never forget.

The trick is training yourself to do it the moment the alarm goes off. If you wait a few minutes, you'll probably get distracted by something else and it still won't get done.

If you have kids or pets who get underfoot, plan distractions for them.

I don't like giving advice about kids, since I don't have any, but this is what worked for my mother and works now for my family and friends. I have lots of pets, so I am pretty confident advising everyone on difficult animals. I have a dingo and a blind cat draped over me as I type this.

Animals and children need mental stimulation and if they don't have it, they're going to come and interact with you to get it. Pets are probably a little easier to manage, because they can't talk and generally require less complicated distractions.

Your best bet with pets is to only feed them with treat and puzzle balls and offer them their breakfast (or dinner, depending on your schedule) right before you write/work. Alternatively, have a big basket of toys that are usually put away and get out three or four new ones each day. Put them down right before you need to focus and hopefully they will get bored around the time you have finished working.

You can do the same thing with children. Keep toys, TV, video games, etc out of reach while everyone is dressing, showering and eating at the start of the day. They should be focused on those activities, not playing. When you are ready to start work, give them their best distraction up first. Lego, video games, books, whatever. Something they are happy to self play with for an hour.

Teach them there is a set time they have to be self entertained before they can have your attention again, then go back to juggling when you are focusing on less important tasks, like washing clothes, etc.

If your children or pets fight or make too much noise together, just set them up in different parts of the house during writing time. Solo play builds personality.  I know some people try and write when their children are napping, but then they're always several hours up on you in sleep. You're better off napping when they nap and using their self directed play time as you self directed writing time.

Be aware of time.

Know how long it takes you to do things and don't over book your day. This one is just here for me personally, because I overbook every single day of my life, then end up stressed and rushing. However because I am pretty organised, I am stressed in a clean house, freshly showered with lunch, so it's not so bad.

20 ways I abuse my cats (according to my cats)

Ways I abuse my cats (according to my cats):

1. Not letting them outside when it’s dark, despite the fact it's dangerous and illegal here.

2. Not letting them in the toilet when I am using it.

3. Giving them chicken which may or may not be identical to the chicken I am already eating.

4. It's raining and I am doing nothing to stop it.

5. Lifting them out of the shower, so I can turn it on.

6. Not letting them eat the dog food.

7. Not letting them eat some random bit of glass or plastic they found on the floor.

8. Not letting them randomly attack the dog for no reason when he's sleeping.

9. Not letting them eat visitor's shoes.

10. Attempting to pat them, or not patting, them depending on circumstances and laws indecipherable to even God.

11. Not letting them chew power cords. Which are plugged in and currently in use.

12. Not letting them lick my eyes when I am sleeping.

13. Wearing shoes.

14. Food bowl still has food in it, but it's not all the way to the top.

15. Let the dog inside when he was damp.

16. I tried to go back inside when they were still outside.

17. Vacuuming.

18. I sometimes touch their feet.

19. I once took them in the car.

20. I sometimes come home smelling like other cats.

Revenge is a dish best served wet...

Good: My massive tomcat Elliot jumping on the bed to say goodnight to me.

Bad: As I murmur ‘Goodnight, Elliot.’ He jams his entire paw into my mouth.

Worst: His paw is WET. My whole body goes rigid as I wait for my taste buds to determine if I am dealing with water from his water bowl or urine from the litter tray.

At the time I was thinking ‘oh my god, what fresh hell is this?! Why do I have cats?’ then it occurred to me: whenever any of them yawn, I jab them in the tongue with my finger. This wasn’t cat weirdness, it was deliberate and malicious payback.

Thankfully, it was water.

I was still disgusted.

The Topher Story

Today, I thought we’d do something a little different. Instead of a writing post, I am going to tell you the story of my mongrel crossbreed, Topher and why I tell people he’s a horrible animal and that he makes my life a living hell. This article started life as an email sent to the pound I got Topher from—though my friends liked it so much, I thought I would share it here:

Topher was one of nine pups, brought to YAPS from Yarrabah in early 2011. Their mother looked something like a brindle German Sheppard—though it was hard to tell, as she was half bald with mange. The pups were five weeks old when I first saw Topher, and she had already abandoned them. The nine of them lived in a pen, outside, in some plastic kennels because YAPS, like so many no kill shelters, is desperately underfunded and has too many dogs.

I chose Topher because he was the quietest and when I picked him up, he sighed and rested his head on my chest, listening to my heartbeat. I fell in love. That ended a week later, when I finally went to pick him up and I heard him scream for the first time.

Yarrabah is a remote aboriginal community. So saying Topher’s mother was ‘part German Sheppard’ is really a joke. There are feral dogs everywhere, most of them descendant from herding dogs or pig dogs. However there hasn’t been a purebred in Yarrabah.... ever. It’s probably 30 generations since there was a ‘breed’ in his lineage. However it’s likely his father had a decent amount of dingo in him, because the sound coming from that 6 week out puppy was nothing like a dog could make.

It wasn’t a whine. It wasn’t even a howl (though he can howl and dingo howls make dog howls sound like goddamn sneezes). It was an extended shriek. A hysterical, unending scream, like a car-crash and a fire alarm had a baby and the baby hated you.

Topher was the most disastrous, nightmarish puppy I have ever known. But what triggered all this screaming? A lack of physical contact. Yes, if I wasn’t physically touching him at all times, he would become an air-raid siren. However he would enthusiastically bite anyone who picked him up. I spent several months living on the floor to keep him quiet. We bled constantly, he bit anything that passed by his face.

Despite having raised three other dogs to be perfectly behaved, well adjusted animals in the past—including Pheonix, who had been badly abused and came to me extremely aggressive and depressed—nothing I did with Topher seemed to work. Determined not to be defeated by a creature that occasionally ate lint, I persevered.

He hated going outside and after several months of him lying prone, letting me physically drag him around the block like he was dead, I gave up on walkies. The neighbours were becoming suspicious.

He ate well, but remained as skinny as an anorexic greyhound but despite several vet visits where he metamorphasized into a hysterical octopus on crack, I was assured he was a healthy, if utterly psychotic, puppy. He was desexed on the earliest possible day the vet was willing to do the procedure in the hope it would calm him down. It didn’t.

He loved banana more than life itself and while he refused to eat bread, pasta or rice leftovers, no one could eat fruit without giving him some. He continued to be slightly thinner than a skeleton and I began to get paranoid someone would call the RSPCA. He also had mange from his mother—dermodectic, not sarcoptic—and a severe allergy to mosquito bites, so his fur was patchy and he looked badly abused. Eukanuba puppy food and every mange cure known to man did nothing to help.

Despite refusing to leave the house, Topher found he quite liked the treadmill and began running a few kilometres a day while I watched TV. He loved trips in the car too, until anyone attempted to leave it, or get him out of it, when he would become a hysterical screaming crack octopus again. It was just as well, as he looked awful.

Every week we brought home piles of new toys to keep him entertained and happy, until the house resembled a very messy day care centre. Whenever Topher destroyed a toy, the little toy pieces would become ‘new toys’ and he would become distraught at any attempts to throw them out.

We moved to Brisbane in October of 2011 and after the mange finally cleared up, Topher began limping. After another hysterical octopus vet visit where the attending vet called him ‘deranged and psychotic’, we found out that both his knees dislocate and the vet suggested surgery. $7000 surgery.

I was told, by many people, that a bullet only costs a dollar.

Why would I spend $7000 on an animal? A feral mongrel, no less. A new dog would be cheaper. Even a pedigree from a breeder would be cheaper. There were plenty of people willing to tell me they would never spend that much on a pet.

It never even crossed my mind. After numerous expensive vet visits where I pointlessly assured vets he was ‘not always this mental’ we found a medication that keeps him pain free and walking comfortably without invasive surgery. There may still be surgery later, but it’s been a long time since he limped at all now.

And, as I had always hoped, on his first birthday, he mellowed out completely. He still has oodles of toys, he’s still as thin as a greyhound and he still hates going outside, but he walks on a lead like a normal dog now. I work from home, so he’s always with me, but these days he’s equally happy to sleep in another room while I work—rather than glued to my leg, shrieking hysterically when I go to the bathroom.

I can’t even imagine how he would have survived in Yarrabah. I suspect it would be physically impossible for him to exist without a couch to sleep on and a kong toy to occasionally drop between my legs into the toilet.

I’d give up my house and live in my car before I gave up Topher. These days people say he’s beautiful and ask what breed he is. I say he’s a ‘some kind of horrible mongrel’ and they look horrified. Topher knows exactly what sort of dog he is. He’s my dog, and he’s never going to be any other kind.

Oh, and for the record? He still rests his head on my chest, listened to my heart, and sighs.