New, healthier email routine off-work

Since work this autumn commenced after the summer holidays, I have had a new afternoon routine, in-between getting home from work and putting kids to bed, not checking email in this period. On days where I write on my novel, or write (only) on my climate change book in the evening, nor do I check email in the evening, meaning that these days I do not check email between 4.30 pm and next morning.

Autumn´s fourth writing day

Today I had this autumn´s fourth writing day, with some 5 hours of writing time - while I was watching the twins (kindergarten closed for planning day). I did some writing on "Human development, inequality and social risks in Latin America and the Nordic countries" and on the forthcoming Biosemiotics editorial "Phenomenology and Biosemiotics".

I also started keeping track of progression in writing of academic articles (I am starting to look upon both academic and other writing in terms of handicraft), by word count. I imagine that 1.000 words per writing day is a decent result, resulting in ca. 50.000 words of academic writing per year (I also devote separate focused time to work on selected book projects, mostly in evenings).

Plans for full writing days

From now on I plan to start having a full-day writing day, working at home, every week, whenever possible. I have made preliminary plans for the rest of this year.

Work and family life - a few new work routines

As a commuter, I am working much of the time from my home office, and I have to structure my workday - also since I am a father-of-one and my son is in kindergarten (only) 3 days a week (plus, my wife commutes too). After a "discussion" today, I've decided to make a few changes:

• After travelling on work trips, I'll work only 1 hour or so (checking email etc.) in daytime (plus work in the evening) the first day I am back home again - presupposing that my son is home this day. He is usually very eager to spend time with me once I have been gone (and I with him).
• In my daily planning, I'll start making room for 1 hour of "email and incidental tasks" in the morning and a further hour for the same task in the evening, in total 2 hours. With this I hope to remedy an all-too-common occurrence: Namely that quite often my daily work plan bursts since new, unexpected tasks that should be dealt with straight away appear. This then leads to working overtime and/or not getting done everything I have planned to get done.
• Trying to get things done well ahead of deadlines.

In sum this should make me more flexible, more relaxed and a more present father and husband.

See also:

Remaining parental leave; plans for spending time with my son