JANUART : come now, we're not ALL morning people! how to wake up late and be productive!

We’ve all seen those posts: ‘how to be a morning person’, ‘how I get out of bed at 5.30am smiling’, etc. Well, I’m sorry guys, and although I have serious respect for you early risers, that’s just not me. And though I don’t get up at 5am everyday (I do get up super early some days, but that’s if I naturally wake up then) I like to think I’m a pretty productive person! Okay, strike that, I’m a damn productive person.

I get up at around 9.45am everyday, give or take 30 mins (I have work at 10am on some weekdays, so obviously earlier then, around 8.30am) and allow myself a lie in occasionally AND I manage to get everything done. It’s not even true to say that I’m a total night owl; I like my sleep, and function best on 10 or so hours of it. I stay up sometimes, when inspired, and yes there are nights when I stay up ALL FLIPPING NIGHT. But that’s very rare, and hey, sporadically doing all nighters when sleep evades me is something my body has gotten used to.

Right, so we’ve established I’m not a morning person, and I like sleep. So how do I get everything done?? That’s the question on everyone’s, or at least my long suffering parents’, lips. Here’s how I do it.

Firstly make sure your self care routine is up to scratch (as a sufferer of mental illness self care can be difficult for me). It sounds super basic but make sure you’re treating yourself well: eating regularly, staying hydrated and keeping yourself clean and happy. It’s like a pyramid and self care is the foundation layer, if you’re not looking after yourself, how can you expect to be productive?

Answer: you can’t.

Lush Prince Charming shower cream // Sukin Facial Moisturiser // Thisworks deep sleep spray //

Dr Bronner's Hemp Rose Castille Soap

Next, I make a selection of lists: I have monthly goals, weekly to-do lists, and since reading Rosie’s post I’ve made a daily list of integral tasks that need doing. I keep this all in my Moleskine Planner. If you’d like to see a post about how I manage my essays, totally comment below and I’d be happy to do that. (I might do it anyway!)

Of course, scheduling work, appointments and the like is very important and spacing out work to be done is essential. This is also done in my planner.

Thirdly, a vital part of being productive is not procrastinating. For me, the way of getting around procrastination is to schedule a certain number of tasks/words to write/pages to read for each day and to stick to deadlines for these things. So if I have 2500 words to write and I want to get it done in 5 days, I'll do 500 wpd (words per day) and if I don't do 500 on Monday, for example, I'll have 1000 to do on Tuesday. It certainly motivates me to get work done! And as long as I get those 500 words done, it doesn't matter how much YouTube I watch or cups of tea I make trying to avoid it. It's about setting small goals and achieving them.

And finally, it’s important to make time for what you enjoy and to reward yourself: for me it’s art and reading and YouTube video-watching. So schedule (yeah, you use that planner, girl) time for that stuff. It sounds cliche, but everyone needs some down-time, so pop it in your diary.