Happy Thursday!!!
I let myself lapse a bit too much this week. I had to take Monday off, so I was a bit behind for a minute there. That meant that this blog post went from Sunday to Monday to Tuesday (oops I forgot) to Wednesday (getting more busy than I thought) to today.
Ah well. I am used to needing to push things back and shuffle them around, but this is the first that one of these blogs fell way behind.
It is currently 7:05 pm for me and I will have about an hour total left in my day to go. My morning went well and was a balance of three hours worth of one on one team calls, meetings, and quick admin tasks. After this I want to start on some client blog content that will be the rest of tonight’s and the bulk of tomorrow’s task.
I did want to be done-done with work by 7:30 tonight, but I ended up getting sleepy around 2pm and took a power nap for a bit.
I think the most valuable lesson this week was in regards to work-life balance. As a remote worker, there is a certain level of flexibility I get to have, which also means I equally can’t escape the work brain because home and work are the same. I need to remember to separate myself better. This proved itself on Monday needing to nap all day and sprinkled through the week taking afternoon naps.
I would rather stop work later at night, than force myself to power through my sleepy state of mind.
My pregnancy brain is full swing as well now, my brain feels like absolute mush and my memory is trash. Usually I can make lists on lists mentally, but now I can recall things needed no more than three days out…if it does not get written down, it is just gone.
My trello as a result gets filled with absolute nonsense as far as tiny notes go now. But I was also able to make a central writing board that four of us use and clean up my own…this has made information processing loads easier.
This week has been a lot of learning, admin style tasks, and quick wins. I have been trying to focus on content, but simply can’t get to it much during the week. Checking emails, messages, and on new start tasks takes up almost ⅔ of my day.Once all positions are filled I will be able to get back to full day dedication of tasks.
This means during the next three days I will be working on FAQs for sites, client content, and building content up for a new page on Pearl Lemon Invest. There was a lot of confusion in regards to this page, so close to two hours this week was spent just trying to figure that out.
I look forward to taking back this week though. Both in productivity and how many tasks I can knock out.
This week I also have been able to start learning blogger outreach. We had a brief meeting today on what to do and resources, but I am going to have to rewatch that to fully absorb the context of it.
Recordings by far are the best part of Whereby though. Given it takes me twice to digest information, being able to rewatch what happens step by step is lovely.
I also learned some crucial aspects in invoicing this week. I spent four hours one day alone on assigning invoices correctly in Freeagent. As a proactive step I will be doing this monthly or every other month to keep up with it. I notice there were ones misassigned that was too late for me to fix and ones simply missing from before I took the task over.
I fixed what I could and caught up with everything available though.
Outside of Pearl Lemon life has been good. I am excited….always…for school to pick back up. Monday I was able to order textbooks ($520 for the first term alone) thank you scholarships.
I also am learning to “perfect” making lo mein. I have had some mad cravings for chinese take-out but refuse to pay for it when I can learn to make it. I found that substituting tamari sauce for the called for soy and oyster sauce mix makes it much less salty and slightly sweeter (and to me better). I opted no meat and instead did an onion, carrot, mushroom, bean sprout, and bok choy blend as well.
Unfortunately for Cody and Todd, this means they will be eating a lot of it because I tend to obsess over a dish until I get it just the way I want it. Lo mein is simply an episode repeat of me making Shakshuka, Palak Paneer, Etouffee and Naan Bread.
All for today though 🙂
Until Sunday (or maybe Monday to give a gap between the days)