No - not in the morning!!!!
I’m Not a Morning Person
I’m not a morning person. Everything I do before about midday is done mechanically. See my opinion of mornings in as a result of reading about Starbucks down below.
Morning – Yes. My brain can produce great copy, but the creative ideas generator section does not function. I cannot make a decision – but if I know what to do – well – I’ll do it.
So I get out of bed in the morning – brew myself a nice cup of English Breakfast Tea – stagger to the computer, switch on and listen to bleeps as Windows 7 comes to life. I click the link to this blog, open it and click ‘Add New Post’ link.
But ‘What am I going to write?’ a decision needs to be done. I’ll look through posts I have written. I’ll try and remember the thoughts I had last night – No – I can’t remember. I look at the screen. No idea comes to me.
Well I’ll just have a look at my emails or see what’s in the newspapers, (just for a couple a minutes – lie to myself). Answer a few mails – reminded that I must phone John. Ten o’clock – make another cup of tea.
I sit down in the lounge – maybe watch a little TV – just until 10.30 – or – well just to 11 and then why not watch erm. More tea and a biscuit.
And then – it’s twelve or twelve thirty and I’ve been incredibly busy doing absolutely nothing. I have to change.
But This Week
My new regime. Around eleven -evening this time – I quickly review my work on the blog. What’s good – what’s bad and what’s OKish.
Grab thesmall notebook and write down quite clearly ideas for blog posts. I tear off a couple of ideas and place them just behind the office keyboard.
So this week crawl out of bed. Tea is carried carefully to the office and carefully placed down on the desk. (Even though the keyboard is supposed to be splash proof – hmm suspicious of Microsoft’s guarantee – does the splash proof include spilled tea).
And like Mission Impossible there written down near my keyboard is my set of tasks for the morning – no decision – no thought – just work to do.
My Brain was Working Through the Night
I automatically power up. WordPress is on and I’m in the text input section. do I hesitate -No. Overnight my brain has been working. The post has been planned. I type and the words start coming. Two, three, five hundred or even a thousand words.
By eleven I’ve got fifteen hundred or even two thousands words in two, three or even five posts. Click - save to draft. Hey check the spelling.
I leave the work alone. I review late afternoon and then search for the appropriate images from my stash of stock images or hunt through the 20 million or so Flickr’s Creative Common Attribution License images, which I can use, providing I give a link to the photographer.
Working this way I write at least a thousand, usable, additional words a day, or to look at another way I’ll write between 250 and 350 extra posts a year. That’s some productivity.
My comments about morning in coffee in the Independent
As mornings are not my thing I had the idea of English coffee bar called Basils, (after Fawlty), where the only order you could make is coffee, one medium size only. The product would be call – a cup of coffee. No decisions – you take what’s on offer or go. If you wanted it milk – then the jugs over there.
Served with surly, uncommunicative staff. Any of them showing the slightest sign of smiling, cheerfulness or being high energetic would be severely punished. Maybe forced to work shifts in Starbucks.
The furniture would be slightly uncomfortable chairs and tables, with dim lighting, where customers could sit in silence, getting slowly more depressed, as they read the gloom and doom of the news.
No background noise. No television. And a sprinkler system that drenches the person using a mobile phone.
Ah – the perfect start to the day.
And now over to you
Are you a morning or evening person? How do you organise your writing? do you have any more productivity tips? Will you be a customer in my new coffee bar?
