Ah the end of June.

Storm season is dying down and real summer is here…the start of the month was a typical Indian Summer…but warmth is finally here for a few months before the fall chill comes back.

This week has felt more productive than the last…and looking forward to following this pattern. As of Friday’s meeting our new goal is to aim at meeting our north star, but to also find a way to be 1% better day by day or week by week.

For me this means finding the best method to queue up my tasks to be the most efficient. I have a habit of just trying to knock out items, but after almost 14 months of work…I need to pair my tasks together to avoid a certain level of burnout.

I typically pair writing by itself and at the end of day so I can sit and focus and other tasks I go by time it takes to complete. I feel pairing research and medium depth tasks with a quick win will create more balance than my current system of quick wins, research, then long tasks.

Peeking into my productivity “hacks” I am a fan of speed blocks and background noise. Disney+ is my biggest ally. I have seen every disney movie growing up and newly released, so it does not hold interest. I allow that to play in the background and often work to the speed of the movie itself. So having something with songs and varying plot signals while being animated allows me to tune to the pace but not actively pay attention….granted I can sing most Disney songs mindlessly at this point.

I also work with my internal rhythm as well. I have a typical Bear personality with having large bursts mid morning and after dinner time. These are my peak hours. I usually nap some point during the afternoon and refuel and will have two short work bursts in the afternoon.

So 2:1:1:2 is my usual hour setup. Weekends follow 1.5:1:1.5. Because I write and do so at 72 words per minute, I can have a shorter hour day but have a higher intensity of work put out because I do not check emails on weekends other than to see if anything is of critical importance and check Whatsapp.

This week I have been able to get initial written versions on Archbee all set and have worked on more content writing. This also includes SWOT projects and updating Upwork….photos are still needed. I was also able to edit paperform…this week has been in depth tasks with few quick wins.

We also had the joy of bringing Federica on board this week. She will be taking over the Amazon Book task and most HR process and helping build those out. It is exciting having these being taken over since it requires a certain level of depth I have trouble dedicating with all of my other tasks.

My plan for today will be to knock this blog out, add 100-200 more words to one content piece and the rest of the day on a 20k word piece I am behind on.

My North Star has still been to aim at clearing out Trello as much as possible. Including my writing tasks, Friday morning I had 17 tasks. By the end of day I was down to 9. 3 of those are ongoing writing tasks. A quick scan over my email means tomorrow morning I will be adding upwards of 10 more for the week and looking to delegate those. Far beats the days of when I first started and would perpetually have 20+ tasks on the back burner.

In non-Pearl Lemon news...life is still slowly returning to normal. More and more businesses are opening back up. This means next Sunday I reserved sports to be able to go to John Ball Zoo. The octopus passed away a month or so ago, but Wasabi (Red Panda) just had triplets. We do need masks to go into the aquarium and reptile rooms, but a mask in the heat is worth it to finally be able to leave the house for more than groceries or a walk around the park.

I have noticed my hours have decreased lately with being abnormally sleepy, but more has been getting accomplished. This trend I would like to continue…especially as at the end of August I enter my second/final senior year at Baker for my BBA. Being able to get as much done as possible in as little time as possible is the biggest goal I have right now.

Fully optimised full round 🙂

That is all on today’s notes though. Time to finish this up and finish up my other piece before a brief writing break and then taking my last two writing blocks for my big piece. Next weekend will be some of the big piece, kemistri piece and another PL based piece.