Five-minute productivity

I hurt my back this morning so doing anything for more than about five minutes has been tricky. After about five minutes I need to move – walk around, stretch, lie on the floor… Anyway, I thought that today would be a write-off as a consequence. I had really wanted to sit and write, but that’s just not going to happen. At least, not write as in ‘disappear down the rabbit-hole and into the world of my book’ kind of writing, which involves total immersion for me, and hence long stretches of sitting. At least, longer than five minutes!

Instead of disappearing down the rabbit-hole, I have been doing a number of five-minute tasks and to my surprise, I have been a lot more productive than I expected to be, just in a different way. 

Things I have done (which I wouldn’t have otherwise) include:

• Sorting out filofax inserts in the ‘stash box’, putting card between different types of insert and labelling it all (I know I’m not using a filofax at the moment, but if/when I move back, this will be useful!)
• Sharpening all my pencils. I keep them in an old jar, with the code “sharpened up, blunt (or propelling pencils) down”. All neatly up now!
• Getting an Ikea six-drawer chest out of a cupboard, tidying it out and sorting sundry stationery out of my desk drawers (where it gets lost) and into the chest, then labelling the drawers with Post-It notes
• Ordering some blackboard paint so that I can paint the fronts of the drawers with it and then label them with chalk
• Slicing up paper into the correct size for my Mulberry binder, ready to print inserts
• Printing next week’s day per page inserts for the Mulberry
• Planning next week’s meals
• Going through the kitchen cupboards and writing a shopping list for tonight’s shopping (which DH will be doing on his own…)
• Cleaning the kitchen (little bit by little bit)
• Cleaning the bathroom (little bit by little bit)
• Emptying all the bins (one by one)
• Writing a blog post (bit by bit)

Etc. etc. etc.

Ready for when the blackboard paint comes...

Sharp, sharp, sharp!

I have been phenomenally more productive than I usually am! I have done each task just for as long as I could, frequently leaving them mid-task to go and do something else that allows my back to move in a different way, whereas normally I would try and tackle a task from start to finish. Of course, I’ve planned or written nary a single word of my book, but at least I’ve done some cleaning!

Maybe that’s the solution, at least to the housework (a task which rates only marginally higher than having root-canal work with no anaesthesia…). Do a task for five minutes, then do something else. I’ll skip the wrecking the back part first though…!