In three previous pieces, Squandering Time, Staying Social, and Taking Time Off, I discussed what matters in the world: 1) focusing on bettering yourself and having future goals, going out with people/being social, and just completely vegging out and letting your mind turn to pudding. Now, these weren’t long pieces by any means, but I think they convey enough to help people on their way to being a fully rounded person. As for me, I live my life based on the principle of borrowed time. There are only so many hours in a day, so many days in a week, and so many weeks in a life. As such, I am not willing to squander that time unless I have accomplished something towards my own goals. In the past, my week was structured in a pretty spontaneous way; I never had issues completing tasks before meeting up with friends.
Now, I am not in such a luxurious place. After calculating out my time, with work and what I believe I need to do to be a successful author, I’ve run into a weird deficit where I only get twenty-seven hours of awake time for non-writing activities (I count reading as a writing activity). This is based on getting seven hours of sleep during the week, working eight hours with a forty minute commute (total), and writing forty hours a week. As such, I’ve basically had to cut out television and movies from my life, otherwise, I would never see friends. During a week, I see friends two to three times, and during a weekend maybe once or twice – I drink during the week since I won’t have time to write after hanging with my friends. I get up early, so I can get to work early and leave early, giving me three-four hours a day during the week to write or read (some of that time is now taken up by working out, I was getting a little too pudgy).
So how do I do it? Simple, I try to solve each of the three necessities in a single week. In order to show you how that works, I figure I would break down a normal workday and a weekend day (Sundays have meal prep for the week in them, and every month there is a day devoted to Cleaning/Picking Up/Binge watching Television). [click “Read More” for my basic schedule]
Workday
- Wake up, grind coffee beans, listen to news, make coffee
- Drink coffee, read section of news article (Stay informed, create new ideas, Work to the Future)
- Go to work – bust ass for 8.5 hours
- Get home, lay on bed and let mind rest (Time Off)
- Workout and watch television shows that were recorded (Time Off)
- Write (Work to the Future)
- Go see friends (Be Social)
- Write (Work to the Future)
- Read (Work to the Future)
- Sleep (Survive)
Weekend Day
(lot more variance, but this is pretty solid review of a common weekend)
- Wake up two hours later (sevenish)
- Go to coffee shop, read, drink water
- Write/Edit
- Get the shakes from not eating (Cook a glorious meal, usually around 1 or 2)
- Veg out on TV while digesting
- Drink pot of tea, edit/write
- Drink pot of tea, edit/write
- Get the shakes from caffine, eat to calm nerves
- Go out with friends (rage!)
- Adjust morning wake up based on time in bed