Entry 24: In Which We Work At Home

I tried for years to deny the fact that I am a morning person. An extreme morning person, actually. It is just not socially acceptable. But there it is, all the same.

It's not just that I automatically wake up early (and fall asleep early), it's that my brain functions best in the morning. I do all my best thinking and get all my best work done before noon. I still get some good stuff done in the early afternoon, but it happens a bit more slowly. And the work I do in the late afternoon and evening has to be checked over the next morning to fix all the low-brain-power errors.

When I work at home, which I do most Tuesdays, I can pretty much just roll out of bed and get started. Usually I'll take a quick shower first, and then draw up my to-do list for the day while I eat breakfast. I'm usually halfway through the first item on the list by 7:00. This way I can take full advantage of those uber-productive, brain-firing-on-all-cylinders morning hours.

On days when I have to go to school, at least two of my best hours are wasted by an hour of getting ready to go, 45-plus minutes on the train, and 15 minutes or so of tidying up the lab and my office. (There's no point in tidying up when I leave at the end of the day since the lab is still being used by the night-owl type students.) Even so, I usually get started by about 8:30 or 8:45, and still get a decent amount done by noon. But I get soooo much more done when I can use those extra morning hours at home.

Plus, I really enjoy the satisfied feeling I have right now of having accomplished several important tasks before most people even arrive at work. It's like the day is already a great success, no matter what else I do or don't get done.

:)