How quarantine life taught me the importance of not having a given work schedule
Since quarantine, I honestly haven’t seen much daylight. I’ve always been a night owl and not a morning person at all. Most of my lifetime this has caused me inconveniences. Because having to be in an office at 8 am, for me, is really hard. Since I can remember I hated getting up early and also, I take my time (and several coffees) to, let’s say function. Let alone being creative.
But sleeping in is commonly related to being lazy. This made me feel bad for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I lost time crying about it, but I subliminally felt like a lazy person who can’t get her shit together.
Until I started to work freelance. Free from fix office hours, free from people telling me when to do my work or when to be creative (and how). I still set my alarm clock on 10 am, to start work at noon, because, if I started later that’d be lazy, no? One thing I finally got to do and enjoy most, is taking my time to wake up and have breakfast. I’m a huge breakfast lover! On some days I even eat “breakfast”-food for dinner (because, who says what we can eat and when anyway?).
Also, I rarely work 8 hours. Let alone in a row. I found that I can concentrate, like really concentrate, for 3 to maximum 5 hours. Usually I work 3 hours, have a long break and work another 3 hours. And in these 6 hours I get WAY more done than in 8 hours in an office! But since quarantine, I sometimes get up as late as 2 pm and start to work until 5 pm. Obviously this means I work until very late at night, sometimes I even see the sun rise. But you know what? It works perfectly for me. I love the tranquility at night. I focus better, have better ideas and I’m more creative. And right now it’s anyway too hot here during day to concentrate on anything (I live in the Caribbean). In other words, I am not lazy. I just work with a different schedule and rhythm than most people - which is completely fine. (I mostly had to convince myself of that, nobody else...)
So for me, becoming more productive and at peace with myself was as simple as listening to my own body and having the freedom to work in my own schedule.
