Marking….and the morning person

Had a bit of an ‘A-ha’ moment this morning.
I have been trying (without a lot of success) to find time to sit and mark my IT students’ major assessment task over the last couple of weeks. Seems like every time I would sit down to get into it, my phone would ring or the email goes bing and something urgent would come up. Seems I spend most of my working day either teaching or putting out IT-related spot fires. Ah, the worry of being the IT go-to man on campus; a mantle I am happy to wear…. most of the time.

I set aside time last night to nail the last part of this marking task, only to find that once the kids had got settled in bed and I had half a moment to scratch myself I was yawning like a cavern and thinking of bed myself. So I set the alarm for 5am and turned out the light.

5 o’clock comes, out of bed I jump (sort of,) make a cup of tea and away we go. Dialled in (yes, I know – its a long story….) and was able to upload student feedback to Moodle without worrying about tying up the phone line. The brain was ticking, the keys were clicking – it is all coming together….By the time the family all got up, I was basically done! Nice one! The house was nice and quiet. I was being nice and quiet so as not to wake anyone. No distractions, other than the Ipod, and a time limit to work to. The ADD part of me had to be settled with nothing to distract me, so the job got done.

You may remember from my post in March on bodybuilding, that I am used to getting into my day early. Nothing better than lifting some heavy weights before brekky. Early mornings were also the way of things for me when I was a kid – there was me sitting on the heater at 6am waiting for the cartoons to come on. After years of guilt for never finding time to read my bible, I suddenly found 20 minutes at the start of my day – regular quiet time suddenly became a habit.

The only problem with all this is a wife who is a night-time person. She picks on me, calling me an ‘old man’ as I am getting sleepy at early hours, in bed dropping the book I am trying to read on my face. There must be a balance in there somewhere, but it strikes me that we work best when we run in our natural stream. For me, that stream seems to want to flow early, rather than late. So the alarm gets set early again tomorrow…off to the gym, or perhaps to the lappy.

More on Blogging

..or was that MORON blogging. 

Finding time to add to your blog is very much ‘Quadrant 2′ stuff. 
You know, not urgent but still important.

It’s right up there with reading a good book, planning a holiday, reading your bible, taking your wife out for dinner, wrestling on the floor with your son.  All really important things that can be easily shoved aside.

Blogging is a nice way to organise your mind, put some thoughts in concrete, and then share with them with others.  Reading someone’s blog can open you to new ideas.  Perhaps I should find a few nice blogs to add to my blogroll?

If only there were more hours in the day…..

“If there is no gardener, there is no garden.”
Steven Covey – First Things First