I never did post a follow-up to my attempt to work a 40-hour (no more, no less) week a couple of weeks ago. It happened — I lost track a little on Friday when I went out to lunch and forgot to make note of the time, but I was within an hour of 40.
I think, given my druthers, that I would work about 50 hours on a “normal” week when there’s not much personal stuff going on. I got everything done that needed to get done, but didn’t really get ahead on anything.
Another thing that I started at around the same time is trying to have an empty inbox at least once on three days of a given week (Sunday to Saturday). Sunday is usually out because I don’t really spend any time on E-Mail, so that works out to be at least every other other day.
I’m on week three of successfully doing that, and it’s been nice — E-Mails equal to dos for me, and I get stressed when buried in to dos. It does come as a bit of a shock, though, when I turn off E-Mail with an empty inbox at 8pm and come back in the morning to 40 new messages.
My next goal will probably be to do the same thing with my paper inbox. But that’s probably not going to happen for a couple of weeks.
