Day 2: Best practices

Today is "day 2" of separation from the big company. (I'm not counting this past weekend.) Here's what I'm doing:

First, I am sticking to my routine. I get up in the morning, shave and shower, and have a small breakfast. I am not laying about in bed until late in the day. I may not be employed but I do have a job: find a new situation and work on my software x-ray project.

I'm also keeping regular meals. Breakfast is "the usual" of cold cereal and some juice, with some degree of flexibility. Today I substituted an orange for the juice. On other days I may have oatmeal. For lunch, it is either a sandwich (on warmer days) or soup (on colder days) with some fruit. Dinner is usually home-made chili, spaghetti, or my not-so-famous chicken teriyaki with vegetables over rice. Or left-overs -- I usually have enough for left-overs.

Beyond waking and eating, I am networking and improving my knowledge of things technical. I'm keeping in touch with former co-workers through e-mail and informing friends of my recent decision. I communicate with friends via e-mail, the phone, or hand-written notes, depending on the friend. I'm also on LinkedIn and I have pages on LiveJournal and MySpace.

I'm using resources at home and resources on the internet. At home I have two PCs and one Mac, all networked together. I use them for writing letters, tracking expenses and preparing budgets, and developing my experience with open source software. Current projects include "Ruby on Rails" and "subversion".

I'm also using resources on the web. I have accounts with Google and Yahoo, which give me e-mail, address books, calendars, to-do lists, and news. I use the ACM and IEEE e-mail forwarding accounts for permanent e-mail addresses; they forward mail into the Google and Yahoo accounts.

With finances, I am keeping an eye on expenditures. I've cut back on dining out and other discretionary expenses. But not completely: I am meeting with a former co-worker for dinner tonight. I'm also keeping a careful watch on bills and making sure that they get paid on time.

Task management is important too. I'm using envelopes from junk mail as notepaper. I keep a pile of blanks ready for ideas, and jot them down when I am away from the computer. Later, I add the notes into the central to-do list. I'm still prioritizing ideas into "today", "this week", and "future", but also into categories "network", "technology", and "housekeeping". The last includes things such as "pay bills" and "grocery shopping". They aren't part of the job hunt, but they are important.

I try to allocate a portion of each day to each of the big areas. Part of the day is for networking and jobhunting. Another part of the day is for technical knowledge. I find that I am good at different things at different times of the day. I am creative and productive with technical knowledge in the early morning and late afternoon, and better at communicating in the late morning and early afternoon. Matching the task to the time when I am most effective at it improves my productivity. Or so I think.