The Boomer’s Got Rhythm…How About You?

This is the 9th post in this particular series. You can read the other at: https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray

The Boomer has been left to his own devices for the weekend. Besides drafting the opening chapter of a novella he is playing with, he has not written anything meaningful in the past 3 days, which were devoted to family things. He is glad that he has family things to deal with but will also be the first to admit that they throw him off his rhythm a bit.
And that got the Boomer thinking about rhythm, because while the family things were hectic, they were also about going from here to there and back again, leaving him lots of time to think. So he thought about rhythm and what it means to people.

Rhythm Is Important

The Boomer watches a fair bit of baseball in the summer. He loves the game because he played it and was fairly good at it in his youth.
The people who broadcast the games often talk about rhythm, because, in baseball especially, rhythm is a key element.
The pitcher and the catcher and the manager need to be in rhythm, in order to keep the pitcher throwing effectively. The rhythm of a batter’s swing is one of the main things that hitting coaches work on with their players. Even the umpiring of the game has to have a rhythm, and the umpires have the added responsibility of keeping the whole game in rhythm. Because when they don’t or can’t that’s usually when things go wrong.

The Boomer Is Sensitive To Rhythm

Over the years he has come to understand his own rhythms. They were established early on when he started writing and carried on when that turned into a profession.
The Boomer’s rhythm has a lot to do with being able to work when his mind is uncluttered with the obligations of his to do list. This is what the early mornings are for. He does most of what he has to do professionally in the morning. He starts when his breakfast is ready and he stops when he feels he has done enough.

In the afternoons he calls or meets with the people he has to call or meet. He rides and he shops and he thinks and in the summer, he also swims.
In the late afternoon, he deals with whatever is left over from the morning, and at a certain point, he basically throws a switch in his head that posts a message to his brain telling him that anything else will get done tomorrow.
Later at night between 11 and 1 AM, the Boomer writes some more. Currently, he is working on a novella about an ex-marine sniper who becomes a contract killer. In the past was the time when I wrote, among other things, short stories, poems, lyrics and my review column, The Couch Potato Chronicles.
Now the Boomer has always considered himself either smart enough or (mostly) lucky enough to maintain that basic rhythm all through his professional life.
This has a lot to do with the fact that he was able to understand very early on, just when the most productive times of day were for him, and probably more importantly when the least productive times were.
In other words, he understood his rhythm.

The Boomer’s  Advice

The Boomer has met a lot of people over the years who confuse busy-ness with actual productivity. And since he has always been, more or less, aware of when he was the most productive, he has been able to use that rhythm to maintain a balance in his work and his life.
The Boomer is not a genius or anything even close. He is basically just a logical person, and things like rhythm and balance have always been important to him.This is certainly not the case for everybody. Because everybody’s different. They have their own rhythm, whether they acknowledge that or not.
So the core advice is that most of the stuff that keeps you sane starts in between your ears. If if you take a step back and look at your life in a detailed sort of way, you will see that there is some sort of rhythm there.
Once you have identified that rhythm, think about the time when you feel you at war with it. When you are forcing it or stretching it beyond its natural boundaries.
It’s the Boomer’s belief, at it always has been, that understanding that rhythm and productivity are very closely aligned are key ingredients to success.
Not a lot of people will not have the luxury of the control over their time that the Boomer has. But understanding your rhythm can be important in terms of how you manage your time productively regardless of how much control you actually have over it.
The Boomer has been asked on occasion how it is that he is able to produce a solid long format post virtually every day. If you have gotten this far, you have just read the answer. He works very hard to stay in rhythm. And, for the most part, it works for him.
Could it work for you? Maybe it’s worth a try.

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