Earlier this week, I said aloud: “God, it’s only Tuesday.” You’ll never guess when I said it.

All this week I’ve been working from about 05:00 to around 19:00 or 20:00 and actually, as I write this to you now, it’s just before 07:00 and I’m on a break. Which is all fine and good, not worth your time talking about — I’ve also just had a biscuit, I can tell you’re enthralled — but this week it feels different, it feels special, working early and nattering with you while all is silent around me.

Except for this hard drive I put on a shelf and which occasionally makes that half of my office vibrate.

I used to do this all the time and it’s been on my mind, on my conscience really, that for months and months now, I’ve not been able to make myself get up. A couple of times the day has worked out just fine when I’ve slept in to 08:00 and that made me think a lot, but overall I’ve been behind with things and I’ve spent most days racing from the start. This week I’ve had to do the longer time, simply from necessity, and before I had that “God it’s Tuesday” moment, I more had a sense that I felt I was back.

It doesn’t matter what you didn’t do yesterday, it only matters what you do today and tomorrow. But on the one hand, I feel I’ve at least won one round against my unbelievable laziness, and on the other, the fact that I’ve had this long break means that I appreciate the stillness more.

When we’re done talking, I’ve got to get back into a job, one of — hang on, let me figure this out… one of something like seven projects that have to be done this week. They each have different deadlines and they’re not conveniently arranged in a row, so in a way, they all need to be pushed along at the same time.

But they also all have something in common. And this is why I realised I wanted to talk to you about this, just now as I was getting us some biscuits from my kitchen.

It’s that I love when a job entirely occupies you. When you have no thoughts whatsoever, except for what decision has to be made now, what work must be done this moment. To be so totally absorbed that you don’t see the time, don’t have your shopping list in the back of your mind, aren’t usually wondering about where the biscuits are, and when you are totally focused to the exclusion of everything else. It’s deeply refreshing and satisfying.

And while I first noticed this back when I worked in BBC local radio and you were so intensely concentrating even as you were surrounded by a loud newsroom, I think this morning I am noticing that you can get it when there is silence. Apart from that drive.

There is also a very, very distant sound of something, I can’t tell if it’s aircraft or cars, it’s that quiet and indistinct and far away. I think this must be half term, too, because there’s no sound of children or parents. I can see five gardens from my office window and there isn’t a pixel of movement – no, wait, a tree just twitched as a bird moved around inside its top branches. The sun is cutting across the gardens perpendicularly to my window and it’s like a stripe of summer.

The light is still on in my office, I should switch that off now. And also turn off the drive.

And I should get back to the work. But if in moments my head will again be entirely in what I’m working on, I suddenly appreciated the stillness and the focus and the time, and I just wanted to take this moment to enjoy it and I wanted you and I to share in it.

Although I’ve eaten your biscuit, sorry.