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@steward-of-the-pen If I ever find a solution, I’ll let you know =P This is exactly how I feel.

I used to be productive when I worked part time and got home at noon. Since I switched to full time work, I feel emotionally exhausted at the end of the day and usually can’t get much done.

I’ve tried getting up earlier, but that means sacrificing sleep for writing time. I made it work for NaNo this past year and then spent what felt like another month emotionally recovering from all the lost rest.

What helps me the most is ritualizing the beginning of writing time with tea and a nice-smelling candle or something like that. I still need like twenty minutes to get into the zone, but it doesn’t seem to matter what time of day I do it.

Though that doesn’t work at all for me in editing, only in drafting :-

Like you I don’t find tiny bursts of hard work productive. If I get inspiration, I can spend five minutes and get thoughts down on paper, but it doesn’t come on command.

What I’ve come to terms with is that it’s possible to “be a writer” for ten minutes without just writing for ten minutes. These days, I spend most of my breaks reading. I think I get more out of that than if I’d spend ten minutes awkwardly typing some rough draft of a thing on my phone—or worse, staring at a draft for ten minutes and getting nothing done before it’s time to get back to work.