We headed for Borough Market to begin with, it’s a little bit of foody heaven with loads of great stores.

Got some yummy salads from a middle eastern stall, a bottle of flax seed oil some sumac dried and crushed middle eastern berry and a couple of alphonso mangoes for Jack. Mangos are his favorite.

We then walked along to the tate modern to see the photography exhibition Exposed voyueristic street photography. Good but not great.

Cup of tea on the balcony before walking back along the river to Westminster and home. It’s been really hot so we had half a Stella each. Thought I’d be too pissed if I has a whole pint. Lol how times change

Quick turnaround after and off to wembley with my son and his mate to watch Oxford United play in the conference play off final.

They live in an amazing house right on the Dordogne river, near Bergerac.  (rear of the house below)

View from Master bedroom (that’s the Dordogne river)

It’s a great place to come and visit, the only downside is that they still have dial up and not upgraded to broadband.

It’s amazing how much I’ve been able to do in a lot less time.

I know Tim Ferriss talks about stopping the interruptions, I’ve just had a really hard time disciplining myself to do it.

I usually get about 40-50 mails a day about a third of those I
delete without opening anyway. The 30 or so that I would usually open
and read. Because it takes so long to load each e-mail I’m
finding that I am being a lot more picky about which ones I open.

This has got me thinking about how I normally work at home…

I’ve tried being ‘disciplined’
and closing my internet browser, however I’ve got a habit or
pattern of when I get stuck or finish a good section of work I think
I’ll just look at my e-mails and then get back to work. Or if I’m
being ‘good’ I might resist the temptation of the e-mail but
instead head to the kitchen for a cuppa or a handful of walnuts.

I’m only away for a week and I figure if it’s really important then the person will send me a follow up message or one of my team will send me an sms message or a direct
e-mail.

Usually when I’m working from home I
have from 9.15 am until 12.45 am each day as my core working hours
and then in the evenings I spend another 2 hours usually from 11Pm to
1.00 AM.  I’ve got all the pieces for the 4HWW in place just not the income yet!!

I’m going to try a different approach back in Oxford.

When I first wake up I’m going to check my e-mail and respond to anything urgent, my 4 year old son is usually pottering around at that time before he gets ready for nursery. I cant really do anything ‘proper’ at that time.

I’m then going to pack my laptop in my rucksack, we cycle to nursery leaving the house at 9.00am, he starts at he starts at 9.10 am. I’m then going to cycle to a local
library 10 minutes away which happens to be next to the gym that I have access to.

Advantage is that I get 10 minutes of hard
cycling, I do bursts at maximum intensity (10-30 seconds followed by a
rest of 10-20 secs), 10 minutes of that is a real good fat burning
work out. I also get 10 minutes on the way back from the library too
so that’s 20 mins quality fat burning exercise.

I’m choosing the library, there are
plenty of coffee shops around but I don’t want to put too much
opportunity for potential interruption in my way.

At the coffee shop there is obviously the coffee, yummy cakes and pastries that I want to avoid and lots of other ‘interesting’ people coming and going. None of that is present at the library, so I’m playing hardball with myself and heading for the library.

I’ll have my laptop powered up and ready to go by 9.30 am.

Let’s see how my new morning routine works out.

What tricks have you played on yourself to increase your productivity that actually work for you?

Tags: 4hww, four hour work week, productivity, france,

Tags: vampireface painting

24 December 2007

Let me introduce my 9 year old niece Esme, her mum and brothers have been staying with us for the past few weeks. We read about an eglu (www.omelet.co.uk) a funky looking chicken house in one of the Sunday papers last week.

She wrote this letter all by herself, I have helped set her up an e-mail account and she sent the message out to selected members of the family.

I wont say any more because what she wrote is excellent!

Dear family,

Have you hard of a eglu? proberly not. Well, it is a house for chickens but even better because it is fox proof and it has got all the stuff you need to look after two chickens. I will get two fresh eggs every morning. I need £440 which is a lote of money. I need people to give me a bit of money and I will give you eggs. Or I can sell the eggs and give you the money but it would take a year to get £125 by selling the eggs so it would take 4 years to give you back all the money I need to start my egg business. Could you invest £25 or more in Esmes eggs?.

Love from Esme.

This is a picture of a eglu.

P.S. There are some for sale on e-bay as well so we may be able to get one cheaper.

Harry commented

I was pleased because I didn’t make it when I tried last week’

It seems OK at teh moment.

Gavin