Late Night PC Service

I've always thought growing grass was a terrible idea. As a kid I was pretty practical and I didn't see any benefit to having a green lawn full. I was also pretty well aware of the amount of effort required to maintain the lawn at home growing up since the mower was often my job. I hated mowing it and my parents weren't even really big lawn freaks. We had weeds and dandelions and bare patches. I always marveled at the crazy amount of time and effort our neighbours across the street wasted on keeping their yard green and presentable.

Now I've grown up and I feel pretty much the same way. It might not make my neighbours happy but at least I didn't follow through with my plan to pave it and paint it green. As a child I assumed the problem was that people wanted a large green square in front of their homes and concrete seemed to be a very practical solution to that problem.

Not all time is created equal. I've started getting up a lot earlier lately and I've found that for me the hours from 6 am to about 10:30 can be really productive. I have a pretty easy time getting focused and if I can get myself in front of a project then I really take off and get things done. Compare that to the early afternoon from, say, 1 until 3 pm and the afternoon version of me seems to be asleep by comparison. I'm unfocused and mentally wander around looking for shiny objects. In the evening I can get plenty done in the battlegrounds on World of Warcraft but when I try to claim that time to work on my taxes I end up frustrated. I've noticed it before but never to the degree that I do now. There are different times of day that I perform better at different tasks. My empirical evidence can be tied back to better sleeping habits and being well-rested and alert in the morning but I think there's something more to it. I think there are a number of factors that make different times of day better for different tasks. Different times of day have different qualities. Some factors are internal and some are in my surroundings. I don't deal well with interruptions for most anything involving a computer. If I'm writing code or configuring software then it just takes a short conversation to put me off track. The worst part is that I often instigate those conversations. Early morning hours are generally devoid of distractions though. There are fewer background thoughts in the morning as well. Since I've been asleep I haven't got any problems on my mind except for the first one I pose. If I've had a tough bit of design question the day before then first thing in the morning I can ask it fresh and it has my whole brain to roam around in until the other distractions show up after lunch. So I like mornings now, with no distractions inside or outside and a freshly charged brain to work on. In the summertime I hope to start going for early morning bike rides again - that's a great way to get the blood flowing. By the time the evening hours come I've had a steady flow of mental work and I'm ready for a good change of subject. That's what makes it a good time for some gaming or some housework. The fact that the house is a mess by the end of the day makes it easy to find something to do that takes very little thought and gives my tired head a rest and make my body work. Tidying the kitchen or working on a construction project (ones that involve hammering are best) makes for a welcome change. Still, I often try to sit down and get a couple hours in on some nagging software-related problem but usually the results are less than stellar. The smallest mental bump in the evening is magnified into a roadblock that turns my full attention to Youtube, Fark or Slashdot. I'm still working on this theory but I have to say that I found a lot more high-quality time when I moved my waking hours from late morning to early. I had to stop drinking coffee regularly to do it because otherwise I just didn't want to go to bed by 9. Not that I couldn't, I just really didn't want to. With me, I've learned that the things I want are more powerful than the things I tell myself I need to do, so the coffee had to move from regular daily habit to weekend treat. That let me make going to bed at a healthy time something that I wanted to do and made mornings more enjoyable. Feel free to add to my theory in the comments...

September's only just started and already I'm behind. It's not just me that's feeling it. Candace is getting started on reading the stack of books for her Masters Degree before classes start in a few days. She's also still moving her stuff in to our place from her old house. My daughter's schedule is full again of skating, piano and gymnastics and still no room for Aikido. I've noticed the past few years (and it seems obvious in retrospect) that September is more than just the back-to-school time. It's when everybody seems to stop relaxing, knuckle down and get back to work on whatever it is they do. I've mentioned before that I have trouble getting myself focused when the workload grows. I don't think it's an uncommon reaction to want to go out and do something different when everything you're in the middle of seems to get boring and stagnate. For example, I had a little success working on a web app login page the other day so last night I sat down at the computer to figure out the next step. And spent an hour-and-a-half reading xkcd. Not just the comic but Randall's blag too. That kind of took me full circle in a "holy shit how does this guy have time on his hands like this" sort of way.