A few people have recently asked me what a typical week currently looks like for me, so I thought I’d oblige by writing a short blog to better explain! I’m in a very fortunate situation where I have a lot of autonomy and can mostly pick my own schedule, but this can sometimes result in quite a bit of indecision about what I should spend my time on.
If you’ve ever found yourself overwhelmed by choice, you’ll understand the feeling of having some hours ahead of you and being completely unsure of how to best use them, which more often than not results in a most unproductive and potentially wasted opportunity.
In my experience this can easily become a daily or weekly event if I don’t employ some kind of structure. Whilst I’ve found that attempting to schedule every minute (or even every hour) is usually a little too rigid for me, assigning and batching similar tasks to certain days of the week has helped me at least realise some “forward momentum” and assist me with staying productive for the most part.
I’ve been tweaking things for the past couple of months, but below is the general concept that I’ve been trying to follow:
Mondays: Live stream on Twitch; dinner with family
Tuesdays: Project/creation day
Wednesdays: Project/creation day
Thursdays: Teaching, video conferences, appointments & general admin; in-person meetings
Fridays: Live stream on Twitch; gigs
Saturdays: Day off; gigs
Sundays: Household chores, preparation for the upcoming week; grocery shopping
*Evenings written in italics
Whilst my search for a way to consistently experience solid productivity on my Tuesday & Wednesday project days continues, my next personal mission is to better include a simple exercise program and practice regime into the mix rather than my current “whenever I can/it usually falls by the wayside” approach.
I do have an idea on how I might make that happen, but I think I’ll save it for a future blog 🙂
I’d love to hear from you below if you’re currently also working towards a refined personal schedule, and of course any suggestions are very welcome!
MB
Good for you for putting this out to all of us! Now we can “help” keep you on track. LUL I work much in the same way in that I take on a lot of work, become overwhelmed with tasks and seem to get very little accomplished some days. Then I’ll get a moment of clarity and am able to get a few things done, one right after another. This gives me a huge boost of accomplishment, and makes me want to do it again.
I identify with this so much Ted! I feel like you described a standard week for me – great to know that I’m in good company. Thanks so much for sharing!
I feel a lot of this too! I am looking to reorganize my schedule but making big changes when it’s not just about me is difficult. Right now, I have
Monday: Teaching
Tuesday: Stream, cook dinner
Wednesday: Teach, cook dinner
Thursday: stream
Friday: Stream
Saturday: D&D, then stream
Sunday: Personal day, aka shopping, chores, etc.
I’m missing a lot of time for practicing, content creation for social media, and self care. I try to fit that in on other days but I don’t have a hard scheduled day for those things which I’m trying to develop. I’ve been asking myself a lot lately whether I should be streaming 4 days a week or if going longer on 3 days and taking that extra day to work on a lot of these other projects would be better.
It’s really interesting to see your schedule and how it compares to mine, thank you so much for sharing!
It can be super tricky to design a timetable that includes everything that we’d like it to, whilst also being one that’s flexible enough to work around inevitable interruptions.
Regarding the amount of streams per week that you mentioned: I’ve found that whilst most people recommend that “three” is a sweet spot, personally I made the decision early on to commit to just two (longer streams) per week. This choice turned out to be a really great one as above all else, it’s been an achievable commitment that my online community has come to trust as I seldom ever miss a show. It’s also helped to ensure that my body has (usually) had plenty of rest between the long stream sessions and that there’s variety in my week/life.
Hope that helps!