Doing More the Night Before

I've discussed this topic before, but it's worth mentioning again. One of the main things that got me through the recent overtime season was an unflinching devotion to the principle of doing more the night before. This meant laying my clothes out before I went to sleep. It also meant taking care of oatmeal, as previously mentioned. Another thing that I took more seriously was getting the diaper washing completely done before going to bed. Since I didn't want to compromise going to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour, I made sure to start the diaper washing early in the evening.

One more thing: anything that I needed to take with me when I left in the morning was put in my lunch bag the night before. If I encountered an item that I knew I'd need to take, I put it in there immediately. This way, I didn't need to hunt things down in the morning. It also cut down on forgetting crucial items (like my access badge) when leaving the house.

One Improvement

One major improvement to my get-ready time has been to remove oatmeal cooking from the morning. I have four bowls to prepare for each morning, and here's the breakdown:

• My own oatmeal. I generally eat this cold. During this recent period of overtime, I would take the resealable bowl to work and eat the oatmeal there. Since it was cold anyway, I started cooking it the night before. That's about two extra minutes freed up in the morning.
• My son's oatmeal. My son recently turned one, and he eats oatmeal all day. I cook one bowl and he gets a portion of it at most meals. His oatmeal is generally cold by the time he eats it, so why not cook it early, too?
• My daughter's oatmeal. I don't cook this. My wife cooks it closer to breakfast time so it's warm. However, it is my duty to prep the bowl (put oatmeal and water in the bowl) and place it in the microwave. We've noticed no ill effect from letting this wet oatmeal stand in the closed microwave overnight.
• My wife's oatmeal. I don't cook this one, either, but there isn't room to let it sit in the microwave. So I pour the oatmeal in the evening and then put the water in before I leave in the morning.

This means that what used to be over five minutes in the morning has been reduced to less than thirty seconds in the morning. An internal element has been mostly converted to an external element. I previously didn't explore this possibility seriously; sleeping about four hours a night pressed the issue for me, though.

Peace!

Back...ish

All right, I've been buried at work, which means I've been working roughly 4:30am to 3:30pm for over five weeks. It's been crazy, but mostly good. This time has brought about some serious improvements in get-ready time (the overall process is complete in less than thirty minutes), and I'll post the routine changes in future days. Peace!