Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts

Monday, 14 February 2011

Prioritising

This is so difficult when there are dozens of things each day you want to do. Besides the obvious, like working or studying, there are always chores that need to be done (but which are often postponed) and depending on how many hobbies you have, you always have other things you want to do. I, for one, have so many there is not one day I can do everything I want. To compensate I mostly run around like a maniac to save time, and I try to do every routine action as efficiently as possible for the same reason. I even zip up and buckle my belt as fast as I can to save two seconds. It's crazy.

Weekdays are different from weekend days, though. I seem to allow myself to relax then, falling into a completely different routine... of laziness. I do things at a leisurely pace and allow myself to spend the day doing fun stuff and resting. I am like a different person.
Sometimes I resolve to do some work or studying on a Saturday or something, but I shouldn't, because even the prospect of one hour's work makes my day a lot less enjoyable, constantly reminding myself I should go and do that thing after finishing the fun activity I am doing at the moment. And there is a reason I take it slow in weekends: I need to rest to keep up my frantic 'weekday pace'.

But enough about weekends. They are about having fun, that's clear enough. On weekdays, however, I want to have fun too. In fact, there are a number of things I just need to do on a weekday for it to count as a 'good' day in my book:
1) I need to be productive, meaning I either need to work and make money, or study - to finally finish my education and be rid of it.
2) I need to get a few hours of relaxation/recreation in.
3) I need to waste as little time as possible (when I need to wait for one minute for food to heat up, I do a leg exercise or something)

It will be obvious I won't feel very good if on any (week)day I relax too little (stress!), but if I don't get enough work done on a weekday I feel equally terrible. Being unproductive feels like being useless to me, even for a day. And I think being useful is one of the key features of existence. Contribute, or die.

I struggle with setting priorities each and every day, however. I could list dozens of things here that I want to do on a certain day, but I will spare you the dreary details. Regardless, I have to choose between these things every day, and this is especially hard when you have to disappoint people. And people seeking to make use of the time of another are disappointed every day, as people just have to make choices and will regularly choose to do something other than meet or speak with others, be it friends, colleagues or acquaintainces. There is just too little time.
Note that this does not mean someone does not have the time - someone just chooses to spend it differently. This is just the thing. When anyone cancels any appointment, or does not reply to an e-mail, it is because he or she chooses to do sometime else instead. This is why you can hold it against them in almost any case (except when there is an emergency). But should you? My solution is counting on people cancelling appointments, which will make the meetings all the better if they come through. If these people cancel, you were expecting it anyway. And if they cancel too often, screw them. Oops, I mean: deprioritise them ;). It's what they did to you, anyway.
If someone continuously deprioritises you, it can make you feel inconsequential, unworthy of someone's attention. If you work with these particular people, however (especially when they have a higher position than you do), you're pretty much fucked.

So every day is a struggle of setting priorities. I make a mental list of the things I really need to do, the things I really should do, and the things I really want to do, and try to make the most of it, to do as much I can in the 16 or so hours I am awake. It would certainly help if days lasted for 30 hours, though...

Tuesday, 9 November 2010

Too little time!

There are way too few hours in a day. Days fly by before you know it, and sometimes I think it's impossible to get anything done. There are more things a day I cannot do for lack of time than things I actually accomplish. I think there should be like 30 hours in a day for days to be actually worthwhile... but only because fatigue would totally overwhelm you if days lasted for 40 hours, otherwise that number would have my vote!