» Zitona « / Foter.com / CC BY
With us moving soon and finally being able to separate our business space from our personal space, we’ve been talking about a lot of changes we need to make. A lot of the changes are ones that will occur naturally – planning our shopping trips more because we won’t be 5 minutes away from everything, being outside more because we’ll have the land to enjoy, cooking more because there’s only one grocery store nearby, etc. But one change we wanted to make was definitely not going to change itself:
Enjoying work, but letting go of some of the distractions we use on long days.
When we have projects or big orders to fulfill for The Gnarly Whale, we usually turn to one thing: our television. Whether it’s our favorite TV shows, a new series we found on Netflix or Hulu, or even a movie – our television is usually on for 90% of our long work days which can easily end at 12+ hours for a week or longer at times. We knew it took longer, but it was the only way to save our sanity when a deadline was days away and we were still working late nights.
But we didn’t want that to continue there. We don’t even have plans to have a TV in our workspace so there wasn’t a real easy way for it to continue when we move. So we brainstormed ways to make the long days a little easier (outside of better planning and more breaks.) We decide music and stand-up comedy would be good ideas and much less distracting, but we wanted more. And finally figured out something that would not only solve this problem, but another one as well.
Audiobooks.
For the longest time, we’ve both talked about reading more but have rarely been able to make the time for it. There have been far too many days that we’ve finally wrapped up work, our chores, time with the pets, and anything else on our to-do list around 9pm and I’m too tired to do anything but sleep or watch TV. So this was the perfect fit for us, especially with the plan we got through Audible that will allow us to each get one book a month in case we each want something different.
I am SO excited for this, especially as the first book I got was Bossypants by Tiny Fey which I’ve been dying to read for years now. We have plans to listen to the LOTR trilogy, The Hobbit, the Mortal Instrument Series, Orange is the New Black and so many others over time, but I would LOVE some recommendations on your favorite books that I should check out!
what are some of the best books you’ve read recently?