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When do you sleep?!
Feb. 23rd, 2011 05:18 pmIn theory, when I had an ordinary office job, I worked 8am to 5pm. I had an hour off for lunch. Once or twice a week I worked later than 5:30pm. I did not work weekends.
As a self-employed person, I typically had one work-related task at a time. Many days, just an hour or two responding to an email or call. The longer-term projects mostly work course development and I had plenty of time in advance of the class to polish. Very low pressure.
Now I have a traditional job. Well, sorta. More traditional than being self-employed. There is no being "finished" at my job. Or "caught up." There is always more and more tasks for me to work on. There are multiple layers of deadlines stretching out into the future. I work through lunch, every evening, and either work chunks of time in the weekend or feel enormously stressed because I'm NOT working during the weekend. Talking to my friends who telecommute, they say that I should either designate times (7am-4pm being my choice) or a limit of hours per day. In conversation yesterday with an old friend who telecommuted for years, she suggested that if I keep at the pace I currently am, I will have an overwork meltdown. There must be a balance, and I am not doing a good job of finding it currently.
I have been short of sleep for weeks. Or what feels like weeks. I have not had more than 6 hours in a night (8 is healthy for me, with at least 10 once a week to stay sane) in multiple weeks. Mostly I am getting 4-5 hours of sleep every night. I'm snapping at T.
So I slept in this morning. I felt guilty, but... T has conference calls tonight, which means I will (whether I slept in or not) be working while he is conference calling.
I think this is a step toward that BALANCE thing. Baby steps count, right?
As a self-employed person, I typically had one work-related task at a time. Many days, just an hour or two responding to an email or call. The longer-term projects mostly work course development and I had plenty of time in advance of the class to polish. Very low pressure.
Now I have a traditional job. Well, sorta. More traditional than being self-employed. There is no being "finished" at my job. Or "caught up." There is always more and more tasks for me to work on. There are multiple layers of deadlines stretching out into the future. I work through lunch, every evening, and either work chunks of time in the weekend or feel enormously stressed because I'm NOT working during the weekend. Talking to my friends who telecommute, they say that I should either designate times (7am-4pm being my choice) or a limit of hours per day. In conversation yesterday with an old friend who telecommuted for years, she suggested that if I keep at the pace I currently am, I will have an overwork meltdown. There must be a balance, and I am not doing a good job of finding it currently.
I have been short of sleep for weeks. Or what feels like weeks. I have not had more than 6 hours in a night (8 is healthy for me, with at least 10 once a week to stay sane) in multiple weeks. Mostly I am getting 4-5 hours of sleep every night. I'm snapping at T.
So I slept in this morning. I felt guilty, but... T has conference calls tonight, which means I will (whether I slept in or not) be working while he is conference calling.
I think this is a step toward that BALANCE thing. Baby steps count, right?
