Posted by Brian McCullough
Recently, we discussed ways to prepare for/manage work during the vacation season.
The website unclutterer.com has another idea for helping you manage your tendency to veg out in front of your computer during holiday’s/weekends. Let’s face it, we’re all champion procrastinators. We sit down with work to do… but an hour later, we’ve read blogs, checked stocks, done everything, in other words, except the work we came to do.
How to discipline yourself? How about NOT plugging your laptop in?
Limit yourself to the life of your laptop battery. Such self-imposed scarcity of time and juice might encourage discipline: you’ll work as much as you can because your chances to do so are limited.
More importantly, this exercise in restraint can cure you of the bad habit I’m most guilty of: checking on work every 5 minutes even though I don’t have to. The limited battery power will encourage you to work only when necessary and to check on work at more reasonable (and less impulsive) intervals.
I was a little stunned that my Saturday morning number was 35 percent. My first thought was that I must have a lame battery. A good battery wouldn’t be on 35 percent in just a day! Except, when I stopped to calculate my usage on Friday, I realized I had easily spent three hours on my laptop. My battery was working fine, it was user consumption that was to blame.
Snip.
My computer officially died with 20 hours to go before work started on Monday.
I don’t like the idea that I used all of my computer’s battery power before the three-day weekend had come to a close. What I took from it is that I’m having difficulty drawing the line between work and free time. I think about work constantly and would like to be able to turn those thoughts off and relax at least once in a while.
So, for the duration of the month, I’m going to have battery-powered laptop weekends. Work matters a great deal to me, but so does taking advantage of my free time. I hope that this process helps me to better prioritize my time away from work and relax and rejuvenate to make my official work time more productive.
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