My new routine

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes very eloquently on the damning situation of being trapped between doing neither what you SHOULD do nor what you WANT to do and therefore wasting your life in a rut of doing nothing. As is so often the case, Jack manages to explicate the matter very clearly for me, as lately I find myself in this situation quite a bit.

As I mentioned recently, I have been having a real problem with focus these days. When it comes to doing work, particularly for school, I've been encountering an amazing amount of difficulty buckling down to a task and getting anything substantial done. Long periods of time that I mean to use for work often just drift into space-out time where nothing meaningful is accomplished. Because I feel guilty for not getting my work done, I feel like it's unjustified for me to spend that time doing something I'd actually like to do instead, so I end up losing all that time to pretty much doing nothing. I'm not sure what's the cause of it-- tiredness, frustration, something else entirely? --but I hate what it's doing to me. It's a point of pride that I've never missed a deadline in my life, but I never used to be a procrastinator, and I'm pretty sure all that rushing at the last minute is pushing down the quality of my work.

So I am going to put myself on a new schedule. I am a creature of habit in the extreme, so when I get into a habit I tend to stick with it pretty closely. My work hours did in fact get pushed back by one hour, so I'd better make the best of it. Now is as good a time as any  to build a new routine.

I'm going to keep getting up at seven like I have been. And I'm going to get a workout in as soon as I get up. At least a half hour of activity. That will give me enough time to get cleaned up before work. It will also get the workout thing out of the way early, so I won't have it hanging over me for the rest of the day.

I will bring lunch with me to work. That way I won't go crazy with hunger or fill up on junk. I'll either prepare this the night before or leave enough time to stop at the grocery store before work. This will also eliminate the need to figure this out after work, which will delay eating further and keep me from moving into the next thing.

I will spend two or three hours of every afternoon working on homework. I will mark this time on my schedule so that my calendar reminds me. If I work for a relatively short period like that every day of the week, I will not have to focus for too long at a stretch and the frequency will keep the work getting done.

I will also schedule time to make dinner more often. My being so busy and unfocused on top of it has kept me from doing this. Consequently I'm not eating very well, nor have I enjoyed one of my favorite hobbies in a pretty long time. Making an effort to shop for groceries for the week instead of randomly when I need something (a longstanding bad habit of mine) will help this, I imagine. I think I will take some time one day out of the week to plan meals and buy supplies will make me much more efficient in this.

Well. That's going to be a pretty big shift from the haphazard, rushing way I've been carrying on lately. But it's really not working for me, I miss my more organized, focused life. So I think I need a radical shift to knock me out of this rut.

If Screwtape drags my ass to hell, it sure isn't going to be for wasting my life on TV Tropes.