I’m really digging my schedule these last few weeks. I teach MWF, which means my Tuesdays and Thursdays are open, and lately that’s led to a pretty high degree of productivity. I go to the gym those days, so I always have to leave the house anyway; it’s pretty easy to talk myself into running errands along the way, especially since the gym is a bit of a drive, and it feels wasteful to go all the way to the other side of town just for that.

It reinforces what I’ve thought before: I’m at my best when I have some structure in my life. Give me nothing but free time and unscheduled tasks, and I end up floundering. Maybe it’s just perception, but I feel like I get more done in an average week now that teaching is taking up some of my time than I did this summer, when my schedule was completely open.

The best example of this rule might be the last two months of my senior year. Having finished my thesis, I was taking two classes, one of them pass/fail, and I had a grand total of five hours of class per week. I wrote a novel and six short stories, and had a great social life, too.

Which raises an interesting point. If I ever do end up writing full-time, I’ll probably need to find some regular volunteer job or the like — something that makes me leave the house on a regular basis. Otherwise the lack of structure might hamstring me.

Anyway, I’m almost done with lunch; time to put my money where my mouth is and do the productivity thing.

(I’ll admit, though, that I’m looking forward to when the wedding is done, and I can officially declare Screw Productivity Week, when I will do jack-all that Tuesday and Thursday.)