Time Manglement for the Distractable Author

Before you ask, no, I did not mean to write "management". This is not management. It's Manglement, and there is a vast difference between the two. Management is doing things right in an orderly way. Manglement is doing things in a disorderly way and maybe getting it right at the end.

It's a bit of a crapshoot, no lie.

I am, by nature, a very disorganised bean. I cannot internally keep track of time. I need alarms and alerts to remind me to do things. A routine helps, but not if it's disrupted by life or shenanigans. For instance - I did not have my coffee or my pills today because I had driving to do and an appointment for physio.

Appointment inertia gets me every time.

Because of my grinchy ankle, I have to have a two-hour timer on to remind me to go apply cold to it in order to help it heal. If I need the bracer, that's thirty minutes away from my normal activities. If I don't, it's fifteen. Why? It takes ten minutes for the cold to get through the bracer and I need to apply the cold pack in three different directions.

But that gives me fifteen minutes to half an hour of work on side projects via my laptop. Not a lot, but it's something. Especially since the distractions from my daily flash fiction are many and interruptions are plentiful. Which results in a short story taking me all firkin day.

Not helped by the ankle thing, either.

The point is that I can get progress in several directions at once. And I can get things done to a point where I have free time to indulge in leisure activities like playing silly games or watching videos at the end of the day.

Not today, though. Today was overfull. And I have bread to make tomorrow. And Saturday, too. All to keep everyone happy.

My timer game for that is nuts. We have GoogHome [Acquired before the AI-enshittening] so I use that for bread, my phone for my ankle, and occasionally enlist the household spawn into monstering the dough into proper formation.

There are other timing devices in the house, but their alarms are weaksauce. I need to hear those things. Auditory Processing Disorder is a bitch to live with. Trust me on that.

But if it's silly and it works, it's not that silly.