One of the gurus that I have read online for several years posted
something recently about not being able to maintain consistency in his
actions. It was interesting and he noted the irony of saying that he
was inconsistent on a blog that he had posted 24 more than 10 years
every week.
I can understand where he is coming from. What I've learned over the
years from his post is that he does things in spurts, sets aside a
week to develop a theme and a bunch of posts around that theme, and
then automates it so that those posts happen without him. So I
understand the being inconsistent concern.
Having worked shift work most of my life I dealt with that every week.
The shiftwork I did was not like so many other people's schedules, a
set of days off with either straight days, straight evening shifts or
swings, or straight mid shifts overnight. Or a shift with rotating
days off that moved according to the calendar.
No, I called my shiftwork schedule the permanent jet lag schedule.
First day back was a late evening shift, second day back was a little
bit earlier but still an evening shift usually until 9 PM. Third day
back could be another evening shift or could be a dayshift like 84 or
7 to 3. Fourth the back was an early dayshift, as early as six in the
morning or seven in the morning. And then the last day was either
another early morning shift or a midnight shift where I got off on my
fourth day, went home and took a nap, and then went in and worked from
1030 until 630 the next morning. And then I was off for 2 1/2 days
and started the whole thing over.
It took me so many years to finally just categorize my days as either
a day shift, and evening shift, or a day off. And then to prioritize
what I was gonna do depending on what type of day it was.
That helped me a lot!
The other thing that I did was instead of being focused on specific
rituals I would just focus on keeping things going in the direction
that I wanted them to go. Always choosing to climb the mountain
instead of taking so many steps down on them and taking more steps
back up. This helped me a lot and led to a much more stable
consistency as my kids grew up and moved out of the house and as I got
to the schedule that was much more consistent than I've ever had in my
life.
Categorize the day and always choose higher. Simple on paper, very
challenging to pull off. I still work at!
#shiftwork #us
