Thou Shall Not Steal.

Unless you are taking wasted time and converting it into productivity. I have talked about this before but one hour a day adds up to seven hours a week. All of a sudden, you went from doing nothing in a week to almost one full workday’s worth of productivity. The key is setting goals and making your time productive.

What I mean by that is that if you can break your work up into bitesize chunks, then you can batch similar operations into short bursts. As an example, it takes time to setup the table saw. What you definitely don’t want to do is spend your one hour setting up a particular cut and then changing it as soon as you are complete (unless you are only cutting one of a particular setup). You may spend one hour setting up and then the next hour cutting everything.

I find if you start thinking this way, they your work becomes much more efficient. The added advantage of batching is that you have times between your work where you mind starts playing ‘job Tetris’. What can I do in an hour? What do I want to do to setup for the next session? How many of this operation do I have to do? Am I setup to get make the best use of my time?

A change that I have done to make my life easier is getting my tools on mobile bases. I don’t have the luxury of everything having a dedicated station so I have to move things around. This allows me to setup and clean-up without as much of the excuse of moving things around as a barrier. This has been a problem in the past because I say to myself, ‘I don’t want to start this because I will have to move everything to get the machine setup. I am want to do X and I only have the time to do Y which means it will be in the way until I can get back to it. Who knows when that will be, so some other time.’

Often times I have found that if I start to get project momentum, I start to cheat on my dedicated time and add 15 minutes more. Fifteen becomes thirty sometimes and before you know it, things are done. I would say rarely does one hour become forty-five minutes or less. That only happens when you don’t really have time and you try to push it.

I have started to steal time in the morning. My biological clock is trending toward early to bed and early to rise. On the weekend, if I get up at 5AM I may have three or four hours before anyone even wakes up. This is the perfect stolen time.

Before I had this revelation, I didn’t waste this time. It was time that I spent working on the blog and even doing some extra posting. But there are only so many hours in the day and I already spend a lot of time each week on this endeavor, so I want to use this time in the shop. I have created time in the shop that I didn’t have.

If there is one downside, it is that the shop door faces the bedroom window. That means that a lot of machine noise tends to easily carry toward my sleeping wife. Some operations particularly joining long boards, it is much easier to do with the door open. After confirming that this is an issue, I now try to guard against making a bunch of machine noise before six or seven. With that, I can turn the heater on and do quieter things or not start until a more reasonable time.

Maybe not a downside, but when I first open my eyes and kind of check the clock, I often see that it is time I can get up and I am motivated to get the day going. This sometimes takes a toll on getting a little extra sleep because my mind starts working.

End Your Programming Routine: I don’t have time is a common excuse for me. Sometimes it is true while most of the time it is not. I need to get to point where I am saying ‘How can I’ rather than ‘I can’t because’. You all know that I am not one to sit and watch TV or the phone. I can barely sit through one movie with my wife. That being said, we can all do better with the time that we have so look for that time you can steal.