The value of waffly timey-wimey scheduling!
Welcome to All the Tasks Fit to Print, my newsletter on all issues productivity-related for authors (and other solopreneurs)!
This is the second part of a three-part series on how to approach building new habits by learning what kind of mental framework you use to create a schedule.
The first post was an overview discussing “pattern vs. routine,” and I suggest you read that in order to understand what the heck I’m talking about!
Now it’s time to focus on what it means to be a “Pattern Person”!
A Pattern is a series of tasks performed in a particular sequence or order but is not anchored to a specific time schedule.
I joke a lot with people that I never get up at the same time in the morning.
My alarms go off as scheduled (yes, I have more than one—look, I’m not a morning person, okay???), but whether I roll out of bed at 5:55 am or 6:15 am or 6:59 am is a crap shoot. However, once I am on my feet, my pattern is set: use restroom, get dressed, walk dog, meditate, make coffee, exercise, drink coffee, get ready for work (this part may or may not include a shower, getting dressed to go out, packing up my briefcase, or just firing up the big-rig in my home office). Occasionally I will drink the coffee before the exercising, because I’m a rebel.
Is this pattern completed by 8:00 am? Or 10:00 am? Yes.
Since it’s not a routine I have to get done by a very specific time, how I go through the pattern is variable. Some days I don’t feel good (getting old sucks!) so I make tea, not coffee, then after I do ten minutes of gentle stretches, I sit around reading fanfic for an hour.
Look, if it was possible for me to get out of bed every morning like a robot at exactly 6:05 am, I would have started doing that in my 20s when it would have been useful. But I don’t, because I can’t.
My brain does not work that way, no matter how much I’ve tried to train it. My ex-husband could do that, though, and I always marveled at his ability to wake up at 6:45 am and be headed out the door to work at 7:10 am. You could set your watch by that. Wild! (More about that, and him, in the next post on routines!)
When I want to start new habits—the exercising portion of my morning pattern is new, for instance—I slide them into an existing pattern but I don’t force myself to set a time (“I’ll exercise between 7:30 and 8:30 am every morning!”) or a time frame (“I’ll exercise for exactly 20 minutes!”). Will I do ten minutes on the rebounder or spend it doing yoga? Will I do twenty minutes of strength training? Will I lie on the ground practicing deep breathing exercises? YES.
The “pattern” approach allows my brain the flexibility and leeway it craves while providing my life structure and habits that are good for me. Trying to force myself to stick to constrained, tightly structured routine just means the habit will fail out the gate.
On the other hand, it has made my life in the modern world of by-the-clock, to-the-minute timekeeping a misery.
Because I’m a pattern person, getting to a job on time has been hell for me my whole entire life. I got fired from one of my first jobs because I was always showing up in a 20 minute window: up to ten minutes early to ten minutes late. I can’t even argue with the firing, because I was, after all, not showing up at the time I was supposed to clock in. I would have fired me too! I was not a good employee, no matter how well I did the rest of my job.
It was the only time I’ve ever been fired (shame is real, y’all) but it was not the last time I struggled to hit that clock-in time. You can’t avoid tracking time completely (at least, I have not found a way to do that!), but “good pattern hygiene” is knowing roughly how long a pattern might take.
My morning routine averages between two and three hours, so I generally allow for three hours to get it all in. If I finish up in two hours, that’s bonus time I can use to get started on a project early or even just sit around drinking coffee and petting my dog. On the rare day my pattern has been interrupted, I can make the call on whether to return to it and finish it up or simply move on. I’m comfortable with that because patterns are meant to be flexible, as long as I am mindful of the interruption becoming its own habit—which might simply mean I need to adjust or re-arrange the pattern.
Ironically, it has made me super aware of time, because I have to put so much effort into not being late for appointments or events. Other people can just willy-nilly fly through the world showing up on time without thinking much about it, but I have given myself anxiety attacks just trying to make a movie time at the theater. My punctuality is legendary and also entirely forced!
Learning how to work with my brain, though, means that in general I know to approach things like appointments and deadlines with a wide-open schedule, which means that instead of being strict with myself (“leave the house at 8:10 am exactly!”) I know to hedge my bets (“leave the house sometime before 8:05; 8:15 at the latest”). I also try to keep meetings to a minimum, because of the stress I feel about punctuality.
The best part is that knowing this is how my brain works has made major parts of my life stress free. I have certain patterns that repeat daily or weekly and that’s how things get done.
When a pattern gets disrupted, as it did recently when I took on a part-time remote job, I often have to fiddle with it for a few weeks to get it nailed down. Should the job be done before or after creative writing time? Before or after lunch? In two-hour sprints, or four hours at a go? Fortunately I had the flexibility to figure all that out.
Also, once you understand how your brain works, you can use other hacks in addition to your pattern or routine to help you succeed.
I find atomic habits work really well for pattern people, because we are not assigning a time to the task. If we are fitting exercising into our pattern, it doesn’t matter what exercises we do or even how long they take. We can build up the atoms of a habit piece by piece, and not worry about whether it filled the 15 minute time slot assigned to it or not.
Time blocking also works well for pattern people, as we prefer the flexibility to decide how exactly to fill that time on an as-needed basis. For me, when I set time aside for fiction writing, which story I work on is variable, and what I do (fresh words, editing, research) is also variable.
Pomodoro is less effective for pattern people, because it is all about timing, even if it is not tied to a specific hour on the clock. For me, pomodoro always falls on the sword of feeling inspired/motivated to keep working. I know that the whole point is to build in breaks so we don’t burn out or get completely distracted, but what works better for me is a goal: a set amount of words (if writing); going through one box; cleaning one room. It might take ten minutes or an hour, but I don’t care about that.
The major “con” with patterns is that if they get truncated or interrupted too many times, they fall apart. If I try to set a morning pattern to include exercising, but exercising is always the first thing I cut when I’m running up against the clock, then that’s not a pattern, that is wishful thinking. At that point, it is time for me to sit down and consider what my pattern is focused on, and what I’m actually trying to accomplish.
I’m comfortable with the fact that sometimes the answers to questions about my priorities and schedule are not immediately clear, as they would be for people who work better using routines tied to a clock (they have their own problems,). I rely on the fact that I can adjust time spans to fit my day and my mood, rather than crashing and burning trying to railroad over my own inclinations.
Do you like having a bit of waffling-about built into your schedule? Then working in patterns might be the best approach for you!
Coming up next week: Routine Living!
Watch for my new book!
As “The Task Mistress,” I am a holistic productivity coach for creatives. Using my background as a project manager and all-round productivity nerd, I help creative entrepreneurs find holistic productivity so they can achieve all their goals, both personal and professional.
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