If someone asks you to take on the whole job of another person or two in your company then it's often linked to an amount of corporate restructuring. The problem becomes how on earth did your busy eight hour day just get made in to 24 hours of madness and most importantly can you cope physically and mentally with all the extra. My own approach to this kind of situation has been to radically look at all the stuff that needs doing and booking it in my day in 30 minute or hour long chunks. Blog posting though has taken a back seat for now in case you hadn't noticed.For the period of time you select you only do the task at hand, that means no cofffee or tea break, let the answer phone take that call and close the email application. Or if you are in the email application for the task then make sure new mail notification is OFF. This is quite effective and helps but you find that the brain doesn't rest easy when it's learning and doing lots. For this you need another strategy or it's a short term of sleepless nights followed by a car accident as you drive to or from work. The importance of brain switch off, or at least on to simmering instead of boiling, cannot be overstated. You have to find something that you can do that completely tasks the brain with not working. For me that's early morning walks in the countryside where I can get some fresh air and concentrate on sheep, insects, plants, flowers, birds, trees in fact anything that's not a computer or a website or a magazine or even driving! Thinking it through, then probably the quintessentially English post on the blog of fellow photographer and friend Nick Wilcox-Brown may be what started my early morning walks approach.
For me it works, I can walk for half an hour or so early in the morning at a fast pace in open country side and then I can get in to work with a state of mind that is not simply frustration and tired. As a bonus you do see some of natures great sights, the sun shining through the long grasses, the swooping flight of red kites over the terrain of Oxfordshire and even the odd early morning hot air balloon.
- p4pictures -
