As it stands right now week 113 of The Lindahl Letter is going to be a long post. Recording it is going to take a good bit of time. That process will probably take about 30 minutes. It should be interesting, which will be a good thing. Right now in the evenings I’m using some of my time that is normally reserved for winding down to work on pushing ahead to build back up that 5 week backlog of content. Generally speaking, a longer editing and review process should produce better content. I’m sure sometimes a good single session post works out well enough, but in the aggregate a little bit of editing and review will improve things. 

Like most people I cannot fully edit something that I just wrote. Some time has to pass between the initial bit of writing and the editing pass. Sure some people can switch back and forth with ease, but I miss things. My grammarian tendencies are stronger with gaps between writing and editing for sure. Right at the start of the day when nothing else is happening and no distractions are present I have some golden time that can be spent writing. For the most part this is about an hour to an hour and half of time that includes no disruptions whatsoever. Nobody else in the house is awake and no other disruptions are going to come into focus. It’s just a question of how that golden time is going to be used. 

For the most part I use the first little bit of that time to engage in some stream of consciousness style writing. A blank word processing document gets opened up and I start to type. Sometimes this yields a page or so of prose that could go in any real direction. Whatever is top of mind bubbles up and gets my focus and attention until a shift occurs. At some point, it always happens where I stop being in the moment and focusing on just writing and begin to work on some other targeted project. Rarely I will be so consumed by an effort that the moment I wake up I’ll start working on that project and won’t spend the time to clear and focus my thoughts beforehand. 

Some people believe in meditation to get to a relaxed state of calm and focus. Based on my needs I can get to that moment of zerospace based on just letting my mind wonder until the stream of thoughts slows down. Part of that is being in the practice of having a daily writing routine. I imagine that sitting down only every once in a while would take a long time to get all the lines of thought down and to reach that point of calmness and reflection. That is one of the reasons that protecting my golden time for writing is so important. It sets up the day and puts me in the right position to work on the hardest things first at the start of the day. That is what works best for me and is a tried and true pattern of habit that I ruthlessly support.