Ahahaha, hahaha, ha. Ha.
This will be a post of two parts, I think - a typical day as I remember those things how wot they used to be, and a typical day for me now. Let's flashback...
So in olden days, I would go to work in my library. I swing past the library pigeonhole to collect the post in the morning, and deal with that first, before checking my inbox and triaging it. I'd check for enquiries, or requests for purchase, and go through those unless there was anything more pressing. Then I'd look at the plan I made in my bullet journal the day before and do anything urgent from that.
Preparation for the day ahead, assuming the library is open that day (the museum is closed on Mondays so the routine's a bit different and involves far more time shunting books around), usually takes me to opening time. We have a lot of volunteers who need their work prepped and ready to go, and if I've not fetched a book for a reader then I'll need to go and do that. Sometimes I'll try and deliver new books to their excited recipients around the museum - that's a great opportunity for a 5-minute chat with various colleagues and can lead to great ideas or progress being made somewhere along the line.
At opening time everything stops for a few minutes while I grab my coffee from the café, but I rarely have an actual coffee break, because usually I'm supervising visitors and can't leave them alone. I carefully make sure I've left the jobs I can do at the desk for opening time because I'm stuck there for the next 3 hours most days - that will usually include processing books, updating files and budgets, answering reader enquiries...all those typical library chores.
Lunch is usually away from my desk, with a Welsh lesson or two from Duo Lingo, then the afternoon is much the same as the morning. I've noticed that the organised readers tend to want to book in for mornings, while the ones who tend to assume that they can just walk in and get what they need the same day tend to leave it to the afternoon. One phoned up at 4pm to ask what time we closed, before requesting books and announcing that they'd just walked to the museum and were waiting outside - it was lucky I was able to fetch the items so quickly!
And now...?
Obviously now there are significantly fewer enquiries from outside (and I wouldn't be able to help much even if there were). I start my day with the children, doing #PEwithJoe which is a great way to boost my energy and spirit in the morning. Then it's call negotiation with my husband, where we work out which calls we have and what time, and who's going to look after the kids while the other's working.
Then our rest of day is pretty much governed by the children's routine: milk/snack at 10:30, lunch at 12, daily walk until the toddler's asleep, then milk at 2:30, snack at 4, dinner at 6. In between, I try to meet with my team or whoever I'm seeing that day, doing the little jobs that crop up (purchasing or paying invoices, emails to colleagues or vendors, work on Framework Five). The rest of the time I'm mostly cataloguing. I say rest of time - that could be 20 minutes of the day or 2 hours, depending on how guilty I'm feeling about the amount of work my schoolchild is not doing!
But I still try and end my day the same way I did as at work - plan the next day on my bullet journal. It keeps me aware of what things are more pressing, and how much I've done (and if there's anything I ended up neglecting). I find routine is really helpful at the moment, and stops me sinking into a completely unproductive black hole!
This will be a post of two parts, I think - a typical day as I remember those things how wot they used to be, and a typical day for me now. Let's flashback...
So in olden days, I would go to work in my library. I swing past the library pigeonhole to collect the post in the morning, and deal with that first, before checking my inbox and triaging it. I'd check for enquiries, or requests for purchase, and go through those unless there was anything more pressing. Then I'd look at the plan I made in my bullet journal the day before and do anything urgent from that.
Preparation for the day ahead, assuming the library is open that day (the museum is closed on Mondays so the routine's a bit different and involves far more time shunting books around), usually takes me to opening time. We have a lot of volunteers who need their work prepped and ready to go, and if I've not fetched a book for a reader then I'll need to go and do that. Sometimes I'll try and deliver new books to their excited recipients around the museum - that's a great opportunity for a 5-minute chat with various colleagues and can lead to great ideas or progress being made somewhere along the line.
At opening time everything stops for a few minutes while I grab my coffee from the café, but I rarely have an actual coffee break, because usually I'm supervising visitors and can't leave them alone. I carefully make sure I've left the jobs I can do at the desk for opening time because I'm stuck there for the next 3 hours most days - that will usually include processing books, updating files and budgets, answering reader enquiries...all those typical library chores.
Lunch is usually away from my desk, with a Welsh lesson or two from Duo Lingo, then the afternoon is much the same as the morning. I've noticed that the organised readers tend to want to book in for mornings, while the ones who tend to assume that they can just walk in and get what they need the same day tend to leave it to the afternoon. One phoned up at 4pm to ask what time we closed, before requesting books and announcing that they'd just walked to the museum and were waiting outside - it was lucky I was able to fetch the items so quickly!
And now...?
Obviously now there are significantly fewer enquiries from outside (and I wouldn't be able to help much even if there were). I start my day with the children, doing #PEwithJoe which is a great way to boost my energy and spirit in the morning. Then it's call negotiation with my husband, where we work out which calls we have and what time, and who's going to look after the kids while the other's working.
Then our rest of day is pretty much governed by the children's routine: milk/snack at 10:30, lunch at 12, daily walk until the toddler's asleep, then milk at 2:30, snack at 4, dinner at 6. In between, I try to meet with my team or whoever I'm seeing that day, doing the little jobs that crop up (purchasing or paying invoices, emails to colleagues or vendors, work on Framework Five). The rest of the time I'm mostly cataloguing. I say rest of time - that could be 20 minutes of the day or 2 hours, depending on how guilty I'm feeling about the amount of work my schoolchild is not doing!
But I still try and end my day the same way I did as at work - plan the next day on my bullet journal. It keeps me aware of what things are more pressing, and how much I've done (and if there's anything I ended up neglecting). I find routine is really helpful at the moment, and stops me sinking into a completely unproductive black hole!
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| I'm not sharing mine - this one is so much neater! |
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