Time Management Tuesday: Will The Unit System Get Me Through The Holidays?

At the beginning of this year, some of us talked about the December time suck for people who work in their homes where holiday tasks want to force themselves into our work time. Well, it's Thanksgiving week and the holiday call is beginning. I have to start on a big holiday meal days in advance. In addition, I'll have some overnighters here, which means a little prep time for the "guest wing."

Losing time to the holidays, in and of itself, is a problem. What also happens, though, is that we can damage our work habits while not working and lose any carry-over flow we might have been experiencing. What to do?

I'm relying on that planning habit I've been trying to create in order to use transitional time and the unit system, which I first heard about way back at the beginning of the year. I was cooking and cleaning in the afternoon yesterday, but not until after I used transitional time to work on the filing project I've got going in my office and a couple of 45-minute units to write an important letter, to work on the layout of the Saving the Planet page we're going to do for my website, and to do some more research for marketing said book. I also did a blog post in late yesterday afternoon. I've done some work on the filing system this morning.

I'm happy to be getting anything done this week, and while I'm not experiencing anything like real flow, I do feel that I'm in some kind of work mode. The plan is to get a unit of work in tomorrow and then start doing more on Friday. (Though not a real workday, since I'll still have guests.)

Note that except for a letter and two blog posts (including this one), I didn't do any writing. I haven't been writing in the sense of generating new material since earlier this year. I wanted to put more energy into the family situation this half year and getting the Saving the Planet e-book has turned out to be hugely time consuming. I go back to a more normal work situation in December (until the next holiday), and things should be settling down with Saving the Planet by March, if not sooner. I'm looking forward to seeing how my Situational Time Management system works when I'm really writing.