The Friendly Anarchist

The “Do Whatever You Want” Approach to Getting Things Done

Time management is a great way to lose time. Instead of actually getting work done, we just dive into dozens of books, blogs, and talks on the topic, all created to make their respective authors richer and keep ourselves entertained. Over the years, I surely obtained a Master in Theoretical Productivity that way, dissecting the topic with an idler’s interest and dedication, yet without ever feeling a bigger need to put most of it into practice. My personal approach of simply combining idleness and action really was all I needed: Instead of worrying about complex organization of tasks, just enter Do Mode, avoid perfectionism, limit action time, and eventually enjoy idleness.

The Problem: Complexity

Eventually, though, I ran into trouble. In my search for tempo giusto I wanted to increase my creative output and handle several projects at once, but it didn’t really work: Not only would I get distracted too easily, I’d also lose the panoramic view of all the tasks I had on my mind. It was during my recent experiment with nightowlism that I decided to definitely tackle this problem.

As you might know, the broader GTD approach to life is to write everything down, collect it with all other input in an inbox, and process this inbox regularly. It also includes a weekly review habit, in order to keep the bigger picture in mind.
So far, so good, but this is where it gets nerdy and overly complex: The GTD user is supposed to organize his tasks into contexts, projects, and whatnot, before he actually gets to do anything. This strikes me as a horrible use of my time that could better be spent watching the clouds.

The problem in a nutcase: Idleness and Action had become too simple for managing all my ideas and projects, but GTD was way too complex in itself to provide a solution in the short term. Having studied so many different techniques over the years, I knew where to look for ideas on how to create a time management system that would be friendly anarchist compatible.

The Solution: Autofocus

My idea was this: I wanted to work with a system that assured I would remember all the stuff that comes up to my mind and review it regularly. I also wanted to make sure I didn’t work on fluff tasks, so the system should make it easy to filter unimportant tasks out. At the same time, I wanted to maintain the power of entering Do Mode without even giving Mr Resistance a chance to invite me over for coffee while being on my way to getting my work done.

As it turns out, the Autofocus system developed my Mark Foster seems to solve all of these issues. I won’t go into too much detail here, as the concept is well-described on his site, but here are the basics:

Write Everything Down. Autofocus doesn’t force you to think about the usefulness of things as they come up to your mind. You just write them down and get them out of your head, keeping distraction to a minimum. Generally, you will use a lined notebook for that, keeping 25-35 entries on each page. Alternatively, you could also use a digital list, p.e. in Remember The Milk or a simple text file. It’s just not as nice to work with, if you’re an analogue person like myself.
Work from your Inbox. This is a total no-go for every GTD nerd, but it’s a great fit for an idler: You don’t need to compartmentalize or even tag the things you put on the list, but just work with them right where you jot them down. No contexts, no projects, and all tasks are treated as equals – the perfect form of democratic productivity. (Note: If you generally work in two different places, i.e. home and office, you might want to use two notebooks instead of one.)
Open and closed lists. While you just keep adding tasks to your one and only list, you mentally distinguish between an open and and several closed lists: Each page of your notebook becomes a closed list once it’s filled, and the next page with free space becomes the new open list. This helps you to track progress and keep motivation, as you keep checking off tasks on your closed lists.
Review as you Go. You process tasks like this: You review the first page by scanning all the items on it. Then, you start reading the list again, slower this time, until you find a task you’d like to work on. Once you finish that task or feel you’ve done enough, you cross it off the list – and, if necessary, add it again at the end of your open list, i.e. the page in the notebook that still has space to write on. You then keep on working on the same closed list, until there’s no more task you’d like to do, and move on to the next page.
Leave Things Undone. The chief attraction of Autofocus is this: Once you review a page for the first time and don’t find any task you’d like to work on, you just discard its tasks entirely. You cross them off with a highlighter and do not put them at the end of your open list again. The reason for this is that these are obviously the tasks you are resisting most, so you’re probably better off not doing them at all. By marking them with a highlighter, though, you can still come back at them at a later moment – maybe once you finish filling the notebook, maybe once a week in a review -, and see if you want to activate some of them again. If you do so, try phrasing them more actionable, in order to really work on them the next time.
Accept Urgency. Many people say that Autofocus looks nice, but it doesn’t allow you to get the “urgent tasks” done you’re confronted with each day. This is really a non-issue: Urgent tasks are either, well, urgent – or they are not. As Foster writes, there’s no need to put urgent tasks on any list whatsoever, because you’ve just gotta do them right now. If that’s not the case, put them on your open list and keep moving: You should make it a goal to go through the your whole Autofocus list at least once a day, so you know that you will get to that task later on.

Why Autofocus Works

It’s very anarchist-friendly: You work on whatever you want!
It necessarily includes establishing a review habit. As I work mainly for my own pleasure, I often used to write ideas down and forget about them. Autofocus should help to fix this.
It avoids getting overwhelmed with a large backlog of projects: You have to kill tasks you don’t work on!
It allows you to keep an eye both on your long-term projects and the urgent stuff that comes up from time to time.
It motivates you to work “little and often” on many tasks. It’s thus a great fit for people who like micro productivity and who want to advance their creative projects consistently.
It includes a Done List: You cross things off all the time. (Worked 15 minutes on your tax return? Check it off and put it at the end of the list.) Maybe this strikes you as childish, but seriously, could there be a better motivator to keep moving?!

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How To Become a Productive Night Owl

Looking at the beautiful Cartagena afternoon sky and getting run over by a truck would be a sweet form to die. That said, I’m glad I managed to escape the truck this time and will consider using the sidewalk for future sky appreciation. Maybe there was another reason for my distractedness, though, as I was outlining this post in my mind, walking a bit numb after a weekend of night owl unproductivity.

It had been full of birthday cakes, Colombian death metal and a dive into the interesting subculture of illegal Caribbean motorcycle moped races, and I probably wasn’t ready to become part of the traffic again. So, first of all, a disclaimer concerning running around semi-somnilent while experimenting with nightowlism: Try this at your own risk, kids!

If you’re still up for giving nightowlism a try now, here are some pointers to get you started, the lessons learned from my experiment!

1. Make a Plan…

If you never worked at night over a longer time in your life, nightowlism can be quite a transition. In order to make it easier, start with a bit of planning: How many nights are you going to work during a normal week, at which times, and on what tasks?

This plan can be as broad or as specific as you like, and how you do it mostly depends on your personality. Hardcore GTDlers will probably set up a very precise schedule and create contexts, routines, and whatnot. But even idlers can benefit from making a plan. Give special consideration to things that have to be done during early bird hours: Errands, meetings, red tape issues. Also, put enough fun stuff into your day, as, remember, you’re gonna be working at night. Your daily plan doesn’t have to be met by the minute, but it helps you to stay on track until the evening hours. (I will write more about a simple approach to daily scheduling in my next post.)

2. …then Drop It: The Permission to Play

The nightowlism experiment was very playful, and that’s why it was both a success and quite entertaining at the same time. Before you fix anything, evaluate what’s working best for you. Try doing standard tasks of your life at different times of the day. Even for the 9-5 employee, there’s a lot of space to do this: If you feel unproductive in the morning, try doing your field work at these times to catch fresh air, or just work on the easiest tasks early, instead of following the GTD rule to start your day with the most important thing. Night owls might benefit from doing the important stuff later! It all depends on your energy!

If you’re working from home, get rid of the idea that “decent people” get up at 6am and are at their desk working at 8. Or just decide becoming indecent; it’s probably more fun, anyway. The main rule is that there are no rules and you should experiment as much as you can. To make it easier to keep track, try keeping a journal jotting down which tasks work well at what time of the day. After a couple of weeks, you will have more clarity about how to schedule your day in accordance with your energy flows.

3. Prepare for Compromise

I had seen this coming and got the confirmation right away: Our world just isn’t ready for night owls yet. Most people around us are either morning people or simply force themselves to appear as if they were. Thus, meetings are set up at 8am and your friends are going out for dinner way too early. If you’re looking for work meetings after 6pm or social activity after midnight, you’ll often be on your own.

Things get more complicated if your partner or, as in my case, your pets are early risers. The last two weeks I have been in charge of taking the dogs for a walk in the mornings, and they really think the day begins when the sun rises: Pretty punctual at 6am around these latitudes. This made the last part of my experiment rather tough, but I eventually found a solution in sleeping a little less at night and putting an emphasis on naps in the afternoon. Also, I noted that I generally did fine sleeping a little less.

4. Find a Night Owl Peer Group

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one here in Cartagena yet, but I spent a great time with a sympathetic peer group of night workers in Cologne, Germany, while preparing my final exams for university two years ago. We were all active or former employees of a professor for Political Science and would generally meet in the office around 4pm or so, having coffee and slowly starting to work. Later at night, we would drink Taiwanese Oolong tea (great for maintaining a high degree of concentration over longer periods of time), have dinner together, and keep working until midnight or so, only to enjoy a couple of beers at the balcony before packing up.
I have never been as productive as during this time, I think. Having a work environment with motivated peers but without early-bird bosses is a great way to get things done!

5. Listen to Your Body

In a hugely popular post on becoming an early riser, Steve Pavlina recommends going to sleep whenever you feel like it and getting up at a regular time with the help of an alarm clock. In my own experience, this is the worst thing you can do. While I agree with him that it’s helpful to listen to your body at night, the same is true for the morning. An alarm clock can disrupt your sleeping patterns and leave you exhausted first time in the morning – not the best way to start a new day! If you want to avoid sleeping in, try using a timer on your stereo. Put on the smoothest music you can enjoy and reduce the volume until it’s barely audible. Let it go off 90 minutes before you have to get up, and you’re fine.

Why does this work? A human sleep cycle lasts approximately 90 minutes. If you use an alarm clock or loud music, you can disrupt this cycle, waking up feeling dizzy and in need to grab a huge cup of coffee. If you use the technique described above, though, the music won’t be loud enough to get you out of a deeper sleeping phase. Once you get towards the end of the cycle, though, you will notice the music and you’ll know it’s time to get up. (If you want to play it safe, you can still set up an alarm for your latest wake-up time, just in case.)

Similarly, don’t push your night owl shifts too far. In order to enter smoothly into sleep, get away from TVs and computers at least an hour before you want to rest. Spend that hour reading, relaxing, meditating, and you will easily fall into sleep once you go to bed.

6. Go Tempo Giusto

After the first two weeks of nightowlism, I definitely abandoned the idea of exclusively working at night. Different tasks, I noted, require different times and different levels of energy: I like to outline and write texts at night and edit them in the morning. Photo editing also works great in the evening, as do lower energy tasks. But if I need full concentration, (not too early) mornings will work best.

This brings us back to tempo giusto, obviously: Living life at your own pace! The biggest misjudgment when trying to get more productive is thinking you will behave like myself or like your best friend or like a productivity guru who wrote a book on the topic. You won’t. Human beings aren’t standardized yet, and each one is unique – thank God! Keep this in mind whenever you are struggling to fit into some productivity scheme that was invented by someone else. You have the freedom and opportunity to get inspired by them, but then go on and create habits in your life that work for you.

Did you enjoy reading this post? Sharing it won’t make you more productive, but it would certainly brighten up my day. Thanks in advance!

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

“Better safe than sorry”? Thoughts on CEOs and intuition, false expectations of security, change, and our moral obligation to live up to our human potential. And then, 13 friendly anarchistic pointers to fix the world.

Have you ever seen Steve Jobs’ commencement address in Stanford? It’s basically the world’s most valuable CEO advocating to follow your heart and intuition, and a bunch of recently graduated yuppies listening to him in awe. Since then, they were joined by roughly three million people who watched the speech on YouTube. “Stay hungry, stay foolish”, Jobs ends, leaving the viewer inspired – and a little puzzled, maybe. Millions of people have seen this address? Why is this planet still a mess, then? Why didn’t they act on it?!

The thing is, old-fashioned rationalism and playing it safe is still cutting edge when it comes to making decisions. Intuition is neither taught nor listened to, even if people like Jobs talk about it. Many of the Stanford graduates can certainly relate to this: Law School instead of Art School, MBA instead of NGO, McKinsey instead of building a start-up in your garage. That’s where the money is, just look at the numbers! Keep in mind the statistics! Make a career, dominate, never look back! It’s only “rational”! Thoughts like this not only govern the economic and political spheres, but also our personal lives. “Stay hungry, stay foolish” is replaced by “Better safe than sorry” – not just for the graduates Jobs spoke to, but for most of us.

The Choice to Change

It’s not as if everybody had a choice, to be sure! I have to think of the little girl from the mountainous regions of Eastern El Salvador, who had to leave school at 12 years of age to help her parents till their land, in order to have something to eat, in order to survive. I don’t think Steve Jobs had this kind of hunger in mind when preparing his speech. I also have to think of my friend Luis who walked around the streets of his barrio even though members of the MS-13 gang had ordered him to stay at home. They didn’t want to see neutral people on “their” soil. He ended up being shot in his head, half his body is paralyzed until today. The offenders are still on the same streets, and he still walks around his barrio, as good as he can. Foolish, maybe, but certainly not the kind Steve Jobs had thought of.

In the meanwhile, we are sitting comfortably at our homes, trying to forget about all this in order to keep plugging away at our jobs or in our online businesses. We sit in our cubicle, worrying about that report we have to hand in. Or we sit in a coffee shop, worrying about how to grow our follower numbers on Twitter. We attend a meeting, showing off our shiny new Blackberry. We hack some boring numbers into a boring spreadsheet, waiting for the boring clock to turn 5pm. If we’re well off, we may leave earlier, making a living as micro entrepreneurs selling info products.

Stay hungry, stay foolish? It certainly doesn’t look like it! We can see all the motivational speeches in the world and still live life below our human potential. We can turn these presentations into just another commodity to consume. It’s true, we can watch every single TED talk ever recorded and still suck at life.

Motivation Alone is Not Enough

If we compare our opportunities – being literate, having access to a computer, living in a hopefully stable democracy (or living voluntarily abroad) – to those of billions of other people in the world, I think we should do a little more than that. In some sense, we have an obligation to do it, because we are part of the priviledged few. An obligation to change, because we can change.

Do we have to build a masterplan to save the planet right away? No. Do we all have to sell our crap and move to El Salvador (or India, or Sri Lanka), to help these poor people? I’m not sure about it. It’s an option, but who says “these poor people” want our help in the first place? It’s certainly not just up to us to decide on that, and history has provided some examples where our help resulted not being helpful at all. “The opposite of good is good intention”, as Kurt Tucholsky said. (Remember Haiti? The Western half of the island of Hispaniola, in the middle of the Caribbean? The first nation to declare independence in Latin America in 1804? The country where more than 230.000 people were killed in an earthquake earlier this year? After the catastrophe, Haiti was flooded by wanna-be helpers from the richer countries in the world that went there without having a clue on what to do. The water and food and shelter they needed was actually making things worse for the affected population. Not always well-intentioned help is the best solution.)

Fixing this planet is a big task to put on a single man’s to-do list. We may invest a whole lifetime and still fail. This is so scary that we prefer to fall into paralysis in front of our plasma TVs. But watching the whole Sopranos (again!) won’t make things better. What we can do is implement change in our own lives, one step at a time, and make a difference through that. We can start to become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. We can consciously accept the limitations of our actions, the possibility of failure, and still listen to our hearts, listen to our intuition, and do the shit that has to be done. Stay foolish, even if this means leaving rhetorics aside, and staying hungry from time to time. Even if it means to risk being sorry rather than safe.

Fix the Planet (Yes, You!)

How can this be put into practice? As a friendly anarchist I believe that the answer to this question can only be given by yourself. I’m not here to tell you what to do. But in order to get you started, here are some pointers:

Listen to your intuition. I cannot repeat this enough. You already know what’s right and wrong, if you’re honest with yourself.
Take one of 100 small steps to save the environment.
Get rid of your car and walk, bike, or use public transport.
Eat less meat. If you love the taste of quality meat (like I do), consider becoming a weekday vegetarian.
Raise consciousness about the problems we have.
Start with a one human revolution and see where it takes you.
Lead by example, but don’t force people to follow you.
Stop buying crap. And stop selling crap. You need to make a living, but you can do it ethically!
Understand that money, power and health are only subordinate goals. To reach happiness, they matter to some extent, but they are not central.
Happiness is not a fixed status in your life. It is reached and maintained only through activity that is in line with your beliefs.
Thus, get active. Follow your passion! At least if it’s not about bombing foreign countries.
Work to live rather than live to work. Find the balance between idleness and action.
Use your energy to do good to other people, but respect their uniqueness and that their views and beliefs may differ from yours.

Defying Death

Is this the recipe for saving the Earth? I don’t know. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a try. As a minimum, we should get clear about one thing: Our expectations of security aren’t worth a damn. Just because a task looks too big to get it done in a day, it doesn’t mean we should procrastinate and ignore it forever. We can always start by changing our own lives. We can always start by building teams, groups, tribes and handle that thing together. But whatever way we decide to pursue, we have to start with one single step, or we will lose our lives about it.

In his commencement address, Steve Jobs is delightfully clear about one issue: All of us will die, rather sooner than later. At one point of the speech, he says: “We are already naked. We have nothing to lose.” This reminds me of a favorite saying of my Colombian buddy Juan, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year: “Yo nací en cuero!”, Juan says, “I was born naked.” We all were. And naked we will die. What we do in between is up to us. It might as well be something worth our while.

Did you enjoy reading this post? Sharing it won’t save the planet, but it would certainly brighten up my day. Thanks in advance!

Featured Comment by James: “I feel I should defend rationality […]. Businesses, politicians, etc. rationalize their actions and choices based on what they believe in, but that’s not the same as actually being rational, or logical. I actually think most people don’t think rationally enough (put their emotions or feelings to one side and actually look at the evidence in front of them). It doesn’t take much clinical thinking to see where your life, the life of others and the state of the world in general, can be improved. Yet most won’t make the changes because of fear, because it doesn’t match with their beliefs, because of the herd mentality, it clashes with their ideological values, it’s too hard, etc. […]”

Good Reads, La Niña Edition

Here in the Caribbean, the rain doesn’t stop. For over a month now we are back in the city, and after a couple of dry days, I hoped the rainy season would take a longer break. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and last night we had a nice thunder storm, driving the dogs crazy. (And, as a consequence, me.) Is it La Niña who will accompany us until 2011? We will see…

This night was rather short, then, but I still wanted to leave you with some great articles and posts I read during the last couple of weeks. What I noticed was that much of this content isn’t from the sites I usually visit. I think I’m getting a little bored recently. There’s so much mediocre content published everyday, and so much repetitive, even incestuous blogging going on in the scene. I would love to see more content that matters and less fluff. More original posts and less bullshit written only to sell me a hot dog and a soda afterwards. Or another ebook.

While there are thankfully some people in my reader that never fail (many of them are hugely popular because of it), I’d love to see more and find new bloggers who really write to make a difference. So if you have great content to share, please let me know.

On a personal side note, Srini from BlogcastFM and The Skool of Life did an interview with me recently. It was a pleasure to talk with him for half an hour about my dilettantic blogging ventures, so if you’re interested in that, feel free to check it out!

[¶]

Kirk Tuck was observing how photographers and artists in general get more and more hung up in their personal little world, instead of creating art that has an impact on a broader scale and that takes a looks at what’s happening on the planet:

“For some reason I get the impression that millions of “enthusiasts” who, in our father’s day, would have been roaming the street and putting in time hoping to become informed observers of the human interplay have abdicated the exterior life in preference for trying to “create” art in their basements and living rooms. Everything has become so self-referential as though we, as a culture, have lost our ability to attach to things outside our selves or to people outside our isolated, one degree of separation spheres. We seem to have lost the feeling that we are all part of an interconnected bio system that’s interwoven and interdependent, not just physically but also spiritually.”

Isn’t this the same thing that’s going on in the blogging scene? Kirk’s blog is a big recommendation for anybody interested in a more philosophical view on photography – and, of course, in beautiful photos.

[¶]

“And now for one of the best ways I’ve found to create a successful blog, ready for this?
DO SOMETHING COOL.” (True words by Sean Ogle. That’s not the only way to do it, of course, but it’s a good one!)

[¶]

How to drive people crazy by communicating with them. This mail exchange with Blockbuster was a big, big laugh for me:

Dear Megan,
With the possible exception of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the movies were not worth watching let alone stealing. In Logan’s Run, for example, the computer crashed at the end when presented with conflicting facts and blew up destroying the entire city. When my computer crashes I carry on a little bit and have a cigarette while it is rebooting. I don’t have to search through rubble for my loved ones. The same programmers probably designed the Blockbuster ‘returned or not’ database.

[¶]

This was one of the best posts I read in months:

Insulated from real hardship, I voluntarily created hardship to challenge myself. I put myself deeper and deeper into debt, bought things I didn’t need, and pushed myself to work harder and harder until I burned out and needed to take a vacation.

I lived in a bubble where everything I needed was provided for me so long as I chose to conform to the rules of the bubble and keep the mask over my face.

When my thirst for reality finally got strong enough — when my burning curiosity finally overcame the fear of change and the unknown — I broke free. I stepped outside of the bubble. I took a walk on the wild side, into the great unknown, where I might get mugged, shot, kidnapped, or catch a deadly disease and die a horrible death with no medical care.

And you know what happen? I got a taste of reality.

It was written by Raam Dev, whose blog I only recently encountered. It’s great quality content, some of the best I have seen recently, and there’s no business bullshit inside. Totally worth an extended visit and an RSS subscription.

[¶]

And this is another great post. It’s a very personal story by Kim Wood that will take you more than 10 seconds to read. There are no bullet points. If you’re a 10 second reader, skip it. (If you’re a 10 second reader, stay on Twitter.) Anyway, it’s valuable stuff. It’s blogging with a message:

I last spoke to my brother nine years ago today.

Barry called to wish my daughter, Kathryn, a happy birthday, but as she wasn’t around, he talked to me. Stories of his life in Darwin. How he was going to take Kathryn to India when she was older. How much he was enjoying learning capoiera, and that he was going to be part of an experimental Noh theatre performance. He had a new motorbike and was thinking of riding to Melbourne at Christmas. He’d been riding to Litchfield National Park, camping and swimming. What an incredibly beautiful place it was. More things … I don’t remember. I just enjoyed listening to him. He’d told me almost the same set of stories the week before, when he’d called for my birthday, but it didn’t matter – listening to him talk, I felt a closeness and connection to him that I’d rarely felt before.

About a week later, he was listed as a missing person with the Northern Territory Police. He was last seen on Nightcliff beach, the night after I spoke to him. Nine years ago tomorrow.

[¶]

Two good posts by Julien Smith:

“Here’s what I’m thinking: the society (or individual) who makes the cost of failure the lowest, while retaining the ability to reap rewards, gets the greatest increase in productivity and living quality.” (1)

“You can pay someone to tweet for you, but consistent participation is expensive and doesn’t work very well if it’s outsourced. Being clever is hard (impossible?) to pay for, but personality plays such an important role that often, it’s best just to do it yourself. You can’t pay to keep passion going, either; instead, it often gets snuffed out just as you’re trying to encourage it by paying for it.” (2)

[¶]

But in the field I am alone. Its not a dream, I’m standing on the ground. I seem to be realizing I have always been there, or not really so far away, anyway. And I am squatting, digging with my fingers, trying to see what’s under that dry grass, brown from August, grasshoppers flying and stinging my legs below my skirt. If I know the quality of the soil here it could give me a sense of impending possibility, of nascent spirit-wealth, of rural self-reliance.

Words and pictures by Aaron Huey. If you like emotional writing and streams of consciousness, this is for you.

[¶]

“Whether it’s a dream photography project you’ve been putting off for years or whatever else, the window of opportunity eventually closes. We have to seize the chance or regret things for eternity.” (Travel and documentary photographer Mitchell Kanashkevich about doing what we must do. I stumbled upon Mitchell yesterday, and found his words to be remarkably similar to the point I made in The Open That Gradually Closes. If you are interested in photography or art as a career, I think you might also benefit from reading this post by him. And check out his photos, they are incredibly well done!)

[¶]

Things I wish my phone did.
A new cartoon series by Hugh MacLeod. This post’s illustration is (CC-BY-NC-ND) from that series. I would consider buying a cellphone if it came with that alien death ray.

Nightowlism: The First Two Weeks

It’s 11:24pm and I am working. I must be doing something right. In three words, nightowlism is awesome. It’s also quite challenging, to be honest. Here are a few remarks, two weeks into my experiment of working at night.

Get earplugs. The first day was… well, the first day. Highly motivated, highly engaged. I got a lot of stuff done, in just two hours from 9:43pm til about midnight. It was a huge hit, but then the morning came. Movement began around me, the dogs started barking and running through the apartment, the kid next door woke up screaming. The day started way too early and I could feel already that the second night wouldn’t be so easy. In the evening, I was tired early on, and day 2 was the first day of skipping.

People and peers. I tried to explain what I was up to to my wife. She smiled and nodded friendly and then asked where we would be going at night. Hmm. Not easy. What’s more, she goes to bed pretty early, and thus also gets up right with the sun. This is, for me, the toughest thing when it comes to nightowlism. As much as I enjoy the atmosphere of working at night, this kind of lifestyle seems to be more appropriate if you are living with other owls, or as a single.

Day 3 of #Nightowlism: I’m getting used to it already. (Plus: A cold, cold beer CAN help productivity!)
(@fabiankruse)

Silence. As it turns out, the silence at night is pure gold. Twitter is quiet. (I love leaving it open just to get rid of some thought from time to time, or chime in with the thoughts of others.) There are no kids playing outside, and much fewer cars. It’s also cooler, here in the Caribbean, so that helps a lot.
A cold, cold beer is great in these moments. And yes, it also helps to get the stuff written. I never believed in the theory of rewarding yourself after finishing a productive day. But I do believe that making the productive time more enjoyable by treating yourself nicely while you’re at it can help indeed. Beer is the nightowl’s cup of coffee, or so it seems.

Different times for different tasks. Editing sucks. There’s just no way for me to get it done at night. While this bothered me at first, it’s really a great lesson: Different tasks require different times. Different environments, different flows of energy, different moods probably. A different focus. For me, writing at night comes easy, and it feels totally natural – but when I have to focus on grammatical and spelling errors, or on taking out what’s just not good enough or useful for the post, nights don’t seem to be the right time to do it.

Early bird productivity. This leads to doing things during the day. For example, although I wrote this piece during my night owl sessions, I am editing it now, at 6:48am. This early bird productivity once led me to be unwilling of working at night because I had accomplished so much during the day. I just skipped the evening. (Yes, I’m an idler.)

Two sides of energy management. One thing is not to go swimming until exhaustion right before starting your night shift. Sun is a real killer, too. We all know it: Run around a day sight-seeing or doing errands and you are ready to sleep at 7pm. Not helpful, if you want to become a productive night owl.
The other thing is sitting in front of a computer all day long and then trying to work in the evening. Don’t laugh, it can happen. I was reading about ten hours or so (books are hard to get here, especially if you have an eclectic taste, so it’s 90% ebooks for me), and then wondered why I wasn’t willing to write anything in the evening. Maybe it was because my eyes were bleeding… I couldn’t probably have known that from the start, could I?

Upcoming. I will continue with the experiment. There are still two weeks to go. I don’t even want to talk about this yet, but it seems as if we’re up for another lesson on balance: Instead of trying to work only at night, I’ll probably end up consciously splitting up my tasks over different hours. This seems to be the most productive approach, and with some experimentation it should be doable. What I’m lacking, for now, is an intelligent napping schedule. Sounds like something worth trying…