Typically we impose schedules on ourselves because we want to be productive and so we know exactly what we’re doing. It gives our day structure and focus. It also tends to keep us on track. Here at ‘Monday’ we want to be lazy, and do as little work as possible. So to that end we want to invert a daily work schedule to make time for things that aren’t required, things that are easy and/or fun.
So one of the things is to assign larger blocks of time. Task switching takes mental energy and effort. We don’t want to take any effort to do anything, so the larger the better. Somewhere in the range of one to two hours.
Next you want breaks something to refresh you. This is contrary to the “Do less in more time” article however when we’re creating a schedule to be more lazy we pay attention to that. In this case the schedule is inverted. We take 5 – 10 minutes to do some work. Now contrary to the philosophy of ‘Monday’ is actually being productive, but in this case the amount of productivity is so small that being productive is not contrary to being lazy. Basically this recharges you for whatever else you’re not doing. Say watching TV. You spent two hours watching TV, and now you need a break because you grow a bit restless. When you do work this re-increases motivation to do nothing for two more hours.
Also you usually schedule in time for rest which is usually at least 30 minutes, but for us, we can schedule an hour. This I would advocate doing work like above only the work I suggest is busywork. Shuffling papers, rearranging emails, etc. Something that does no work but keeps you busy. This is just purely for relaxation where the 5-10 minutes in between tasks is to keep you recharged as you spend your day doing nothing. This would be a great way to put some pop tarts in the toaster, since you’re not going to be spending the effort to cook anyways.
I realize this is a short article, but there’s not much to making a schedule. Just realize that you will want to be flexible and make time for doing stuff like going to the bathroom or eating lunch and breakfast.
Here’s a typical lazy schedule for me:
- 7 AM – wake up
- 8 AM – Sit around
- 9 AM – Get some breakfast preferably cold leftovers from last night so you don’t have to prepare anything
- 10 AM – Watch some TV
- 12 noon – snack on some chips because making lunch takes too long
- 1 PM – Watch more TV
- 3 PM – take a nap
- 5 PM – Realize it’s too much work to fill the rest of this out and stop.
Until ‘Monday’