Help me stop dilly dallying in the morning
August 11, 2015 9:49 PM   Subscribe

I waste a lot of time in the morning. Since I work from home, sometimes it turns into an all-day do-nothing-fest. Although at my last job, I still needed 2-3 hours to "get ready" before work. I spent most of that time doing nothing or watching the news. Please help me stop wasting so much time!

All I really need is 10 mins to wake up with a cup of coffee and then go take a shower. I even waste a lot of time in the shower standing under the water when I'm done actually showering. (wasteful I know) Why do I waste so much time and put off doing what needs to get done? How do I become more efficient and productive, and less of a procrastinator in the mornings?
posted by atinna to Society & Culture (17 answers total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
Set a timer in the morning. Give yourself enough time to get ready and fart around. Once the timer goes off, get down to business.
posted by zagyzebra at 9:53 PM on August 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Maybe doing something on work days before the morning shower--doing push ups or going for a ten minute walk--will change the routine enough and put you in a different place mentally than you are in your current habit. Obviously do something time defined, replacing "watching the news for a while" with "listening to music for a while" is unlikely to help.
posted by mark k at 10:16 PM on August 11, 2015


Is all you need really ten minutes? Because strictly speaking, yes, maybe caffeine and a few minutes' worth of soap and water are enough to allow you to perform a reasonable facsimile of humanity, that doesn't mean you're actually ready to do a day's work at that point. Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good, and if what you're straining for is a completely unreasonable ready time, then the plan collapses very easily.

I used to think it was the food, which helps a bit, but I've noticed that actually taking the time to cook in the morning before work makes me feel substantially more human once I reach the office. Your morning needs to be a transition from "unconscious" to "fully functioning adult", not "zombie", so try to give yourself sufficient time and preparation to actually tackle something fully-functioning for you before you have to do it for anybody else. Don't make the goal ten minutes, make the goal two hours. Once you can successfully get going in two hours, then look at whether you can do the same in an hour.
posted by Sequence at 10:26 PM on August 11, 2015 [22 favorites]


I have a game I play, when I find myself oozing around my apartment instead of getting out of the house. I will suddenly start counting to 100, slowly but steadily, and my goal is to be in the hallway, locking my apartment door when 100 hits. A count to 100 might not be enough to be sitting in front of your laptop, fingers perched to answer the first work email, but it will help jerk you out of your drifting phase of doing nothing.
posted by missmary6 at 10:32 PM on August 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm like this when I don't get enough sleep. I really need around 9 hours to be functional, but a thousand yard stare sets in if I've only gotten seven or less. It's also worse if I wake early versus late, no matter precisely how many hours I've gotten.

Try sleeping more. It might help.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:53 PM on August 11, 2015 [12 favorites]


Best answer: I find that my procrastination feeds on inactivity and guilt; the less work I do and feel bad about it, the more I will procrastinate.

If I force myself to do a small work task right away (i. e., before my coffee, Internet , or getting ready), the better I will feel and the more work I will do after my morning routine. I am not a morning person, so this is hard, but easing into the day encourages my procrastination.
posted by girl flaneur at 11:00 PM on August 11, 2015 [13 favorites]


I had a friend in your situation who found it helpful to go to a nearby college campus and work around students who were busy studying and doing homework. He found it easier to get down to work when everyone around him was doing the same thing. I joined him several times, and found it easier too.

As for myself, I find that if I don't turn on the television, computer, or any other device with an electrically lit screen, then I'm more likely to get bored and want to get down to work sooner. Something about those glorified lightbulbs just sap all my will to be productive. They're just too damn entertaining.

In the end, I think the best advice is to try lots of different methods until you find one that works for you. Personally, I think if you need 2 to 3 hours to get your mind and body ready for working, then so be it. Once you accept that about yourself, you can schedule your activities around it. It's really not that weird to need some wake up time.
posted by sam_harms at 11:08 PM on August 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm working through the same thing right now. Establish a routine, basically.
I've been relaxing for a month before my new job starts and I have to take steps to make sure I don't end up watching movies all day.

These are the things that allow me to have a successful routine and get things done in the morning.

* Make a schedule for the next day before you go to bed. Mine doesn't have particular times, but it reads: Wake, Workout, Breakfast, Ace Hardware Run, Lunch, GRE Study
* Wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day. You will stop feeling drowsy when you wake up.
* Do something small immediately after you wake up. I put away the dry dishes from last night, water the various plants around the house, make my bed, and maybe splash some water on my face.
* Do something larger immediately after you do something small. I go to the gym then make breakfast.
* Start your day and do what you need to do.

The key for me is to be organized about it and have one task after another. Helps me stay focused.
posted by lalunamel at 11:31 PM on August 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


For me, it used to take about 90 minutes to make coffee and have the caffeine really kick in. Now (after quitting coffee), it still takes about 60 minutes to make food and get dressed. Maybe you just need to create a block of time called "getting ready" that starts at 7 am and ends at 9 am, or whenever you want to start work. Then go to bed early enough that you can wake up refreshed in time for that activity.
posted by salvia at 11:56 PM on August 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Set appointments you need to keep in the morning. So haircut at 10. Next day, doctor at 10. Next day, early lunch with friend.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:30 AM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Generally speaking, I think this happens when you are anxious or uncertain about what you have to do. You then stall indefinitely to avoid having to make a decision or begin a difficult task. You will need to stop and identify exactly what your fears or uncertainties are. When I do this I find that surprisingly stupid-seeming things can lurk in the back of my mind seeming important until they are examined. For example, do you not know what to do first? Do you dread opening your email? Do you not know where you are going to sit to work effectively and comfortably? Do you have paperwork to accomplish that seems onerous or requires several as-yet-unknown steps to begin? You get the idea. Often just a few minutes of clear-headed, rational attention to these road blocks can reduce or remove them. I find that things like "I have to write this paragraph but I don't really know what qualifications it should meet so it seems impossible" is the kind of out of focus anxiety which, in examined, can keep me noodling on the Internet for a long time. Address head on!
posted by Cygnet at 3:37 AM on August 12, 2015 [28 favorites]


I actually feel best when I have that hour or so to fritter away (good morning, Metafilter!) while my brain wakes up. Don't aim for complete efficiency; it's highly overrated and a little exhausting, even if you use the time you save for sleep.

Since you work from home, you may need some sort of routine that substitutes for a commute - something that helps your brain transition from "I'm at home" to "I'm at work." It could be as simple as wearing a bathrobe that you take off when you get down to work, but things that provide more interruption often work better, like a walk around the block or a trip to the gym. Whatever you choose to do, set an alarm and do it at the same time every day. When you start out, time it so you've still got a good chunk of free time in the morning, and once you've established the habit, move it earlier and earlier.
posted by Metroid Baby at 3:50 AM on August 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


I would have your cup of coffee at your desk, once you sitting ready to work. I would get my butt there since I look forward to it so much. I'd get to have mine once I got into my car, ready to commute.
posted by beccaj at 5:21 AM on August 12, 2015


I was having this issue, too. Here's what helped me figure it out: I wrote down my evening-into-morning routine, with time range estimates for each item. I wrote down my ideal schedule on one side of the page, and my actual schedule on the other. That way, I was able to clearly see the differences between how I wanted things to be and how they actually were. Here are the things that turned out to be factors for me:

- The biggest contributing factor to my morning sluggishness was that I had been chronically depriving myself of sleep. I'd been getting only about 6 hours of sleep per night, when I know very well that I need 8 or so hours. This was leading directly to a whole lot of snoozing, slowness in accomplishing all my morning tasks, and a general feeling of reluctance to get to work.
- The internet was really not helping -- either before bed (when I was likely to stay up late watching "just one more episode") or in the morning, when I was getting sucked into a Facebook hole.
- I was also running into a bunch of extra complications with my morning needs, like -- I didn't always have breakfast supplies handy, sometimes there were so many dishes on the counter that it was challenging even to get my coffee into a mug, etc.

Once I figured that stuff out (your stuff may be different), I realized that Evening-Me was making a lot of things unnecessarily difficult for Morning-Me. So I figured out ways that Evening-Me could, instead, smooth the way for Morning-Me. That included;

- I set up time restrictions on my wireless access point so that internet would turn off before my bedtime (so I couldn't just automatically keep surfing the web or watching Netflix without having to go through a pain-in-the-ass process of resetting it). I also turned off wifi in the morning an hour before I was supposed to be at work.
- The internet restrictions also helped TREMENDOUSLY with getting enough sleep, which turned out to be the biggest help of all.
- I planned ahead to have breakfast supplies that I liked, and making sure that I had enough clean space in the kitchen to work.
- I did some little extra things like packing my lunch & my bag the night before.

Again, your specific factors might be different, but I think three things will be helpful no matter what: (1) write down your actual vs. ideal routine, (2) find the ways that Evening-You is currently sabotaging Morning-You, and figure out how to flip the script, and (3) get enough sleep!
posted by ourobouros at 5:38 AM on August 12, 2015 [9 favorites]


As someone who works from home, I find that time-tracking software helps keep me on track. (Do a search for it, and you'll find tons of options.) Set a goal for yourself to work a certain number of hours a day. Be realistic and factor in some breaks. When you hit your goals, maybe reward yourself with something. It doesn't really matter when you start working as long as you hit your goals. If you find you have to start working earlier to meet them, they maybe you won't feel so inclined to dilly dally.
posted by Leontine at 8:01 AM on August 12, 2015


I agree 100% with Sequence and other commenters that maybe you need more than 10 minutes to get ready in the morning. Maybe it would help if you thought differently about your work day. I think we're trained to think of a work day as:
- wake up
- get ready
-go to work
-come home
- Not Work time until bed

And by Not Work I mean everything that you have to do not related to work, be it cook dinner, run errands, watch TV, whatever. Maybe you could try to split up your Not Work time so that you have two or three hours in the morning to run errands, watch TV, cook your meals for the day, whatever, then you spend X number of hours at your desk working, then you have a few hours of Not Work before you go to bed. To put it a different way, if you now get up at 8, start work at 8:30 and work til 5, why not get up at 8 and then work from 10-6:30 instead?
posted by lollymccatburglar at 9:32 AM on August 12, 2015


Are you a night owl? I hate mornings — I feel dead until noon, and will waste one to four hours every day if given a chance. My attention perks at dusk, peaks at 10 or 11PM and falls off around 1AM.

When I have to do "normal people" hours, I set an album I really like as my alarm clock... get that coffee pumping... eat a bite or two STAT... put on a trash outfit... and go for a brisk, sunglasses-on, no expression walk around the block until I feel alive.

By the time I'm home my black mood has fallen away, I feel excited by all the city sounds and sights, and I've unconsciously sorted out my priorities for the day. I can shower, dress, brekkie and begin.

PS Showers are the best for thinking! Maybe you dawdle because you're stealing time to daydream and be creative, and you should make that a conscious part of your ritual.
posted by fritillary at 5:42 PM on August 17, 2015


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