The First Three Days

Well, the first three days went.. okay.  After looking back on it all and seeing what I did, I can see a few things that tripped me up.  I'm not going to dwell on those things too much simply because it's perfectly natural, and even expected, to not do everything perfectly.  I will list some things I did or didn't do correctly (in my opinion) in a semi-competent fashion.  If it's of help, awesome!

Day 1
I started at 10am!
   I say started, I actually woke up at 10am.  Stupidly I forgot to set an alarm to get up 3 hours prior to when I actually did.  I wasn't angry, or annoyed for long, because I was excited about what I was going to be doing.  Also, because I only had 165 catalogues to drop (the remaining 330 were on their way that day) in the morning, which took 2 hours.  So by midday, I was done, and I was waiting for my remaining cats to arrive so I could sort them out, and ship them off!  By 10 past 12, I was getting fidgety.  By half past, I was checking it was indeed today they were scheduled to be here.  4 o'clock the delivery man came with my catalogues.  I was slightly disappointed, because I wanted as many of them to be out as possible.  But I figured it would only take me a couple of hours to do it if I powered through them all.  A couple of hours was actually 5 hours, and by 9pm they were nicely packed and ready to go.  I wasn't going to dwell on this, as I figured there was a good chance this would happen, so I started to plan Thursday.

Day 2
I started at 10am again?!
   How did this happen?  I set my alarm this time, and still those 3 hours were slept away.  This time I was annoyed with myself, because I had a hell of a lot more to do today than compared to yesterday.  But, I shook all of that off and bolted out there to drop those cats.  I had hit my village on Wednesday and was going to tackle the adjacent one (and bigger one) today.  It took about 5 hours in total, although it would have taken 4 but I stupidly went to Starbucks for lunch (next time, a sandwich and a flask!) which ate an hour due to travel and incompetent customer service (wrong coffee, wrong cake, and I'm sure I underpaid).  So, I was done by 3pm.  Not bad.  Now, it was time to pick up my cats from yesterday.  This shouldn't take long, it's only 3pm, I have a fair bit of time.  I figured, at max it would take 2 hours to pick up, and 2 hours to drop.  7pm finish was my target.  But, it didn't quite work out that way.  As I was picking up, I was turning the cats in the car as I was going, thinking this would be a doddle.  2 hours of picking up turned into 4 hours, and by the time it reached 7pm, I could barely see my wet book, let alone house numbers.  Again, I was fairly annoyed at myself, but almost thankful, too.  I underestimated just how long it would take to do this.  Confused at how picking up 165 catalogues could take so long, I called my sponsor, Josh and asked how long it takes him to do that amount on average.  When I told him how long it took me, he asked if I had turned them in the car.  Of course, I said yes, and he suggested bringing them home to turn them.  Some people I'm sure can turn them on the go and be done quicker that way, but I need more space than that, it seems.  Then again, I'm kind've glad it happened then, because I am beginning to know how I work best more, which will help me in the future.  I got back that evening and started to count my first drop of 165.  I got £180 in orders.  That lifted my spirits and gave me confidence like nothing else.  My village has historically been good to me in terms of orders in the past, but it's always a nice surprise to see a good turn around considering the number of cats.

Day 3
I got up on time!
   Fridays are typically the easiest in terms of workload, as I am collecting on these days.  I ran around collecting the catalogues, thinking this is gonna be a nice easy Friday where I don't have to worry about dropping anything.  But I did have to worry about dropping something... my wet book.  Once I had picked everything up from Thursday's drop, I went to do the stragglers from Wednesday's... but I couldn't find the wet book.  I searched the car, my pockets and my house but couldn't find it anywhere.  I was panicking like hell.  Fortunately, it was only 165 cats, and I had memorised a lot of the houses that I had been to, and ones that I hadn't.  Then, as luck would have it, as I was picking up a few strays from Wednesday's, a lady had put the wet book with her catalogues.  Boo-ya!  I thanked her in person, and was able to finish the rest of my pick up.  When I got back and sorted through them all, I got another £180.  That's not entirely surprising, as the village I dropped on Thursday is very hit-and-miss in terms of orders.

Overall I was, and am, pretty happy with the result.  This is because if I can hit that same amount next week per day (as opposed to per week), I would be well above my initial expectations (£400 a week was what I was expecting).  I made some mistakes which certainly skewed my results and, although I've not yet had a chance to count how many cats I got back, I know I have a few stragglers left out there.

Moving forward and thinking of next week, I feel I can vastly improve my productivity by learning from my mistakes (another massive personal advantage of this blog is that I have these mistakes documented for future reference!) and improving on them.  And on a personal note, when I revealed to my wife about the amount I got in terms of orders, her ears definitely pricked.  This could be the sign of her starting to realise that it's not all talk.  My actions will speak for themselves!

I have no idea if any of that made sense, but if you made it this far, thanks for reading!