In the film industry, the term down days doesn’t refer to those times you are feeling a bit low. It means days in between shooting where we shut down. These can be caused by a lost location, scheduling conflicts and other unanticipated interruptions. As a freelancer, they are great opportunities to catch up on errands, sleep, personal calls and other things that go by the wayside when in production.
Here is what I noticed recently…
- I tend to read more of them on weekends, though I always hit my favorites during the week to keep me inspired and feeling connected
- Wednesdays make a great down day for doing a mid-week catch up
- Going from Friday to Monday without posting is a long stretch
- Like me, many of my readers reading more posts on their off days
- Though I tried cutting my blogging down to four days a week, I miss it too much so instead I’m going to make Wednesdays a down day and post for my readers once on weekends when I can
It is a good exercise to take a step back and notice what is working for you in how you are setting up your week and what isn’t. We may not be able to add more hours to the twenty-four we have but we can work smarter. How can you use the mid-week point of Wednesday to regroup and make the most of the rest of your work week? What times of the day are best for phone calls? For creating content, presentations or completing reports? How can you be more efficient?
If you squeeze a lemon by hand, you absolutely get juice out of it but if you take time to use a juicing device, you get every last drop. Yes, you have the clean up of the device, but getting more results far outweighs the time invested in the clean up. Look at your days and weeks like a lemon and check out yesterday’s post on Reining In Random Actions. It will give you more tips on how taking an hour to generate your weekly plan on paper before dashing into the first day of the week can help you reach your goals at an accelerated rate.
Meanwhile, starting next week you can expect my blogs on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and, when I can, once on the weekend…my way of squeezing the most out of my week.
