12 July 2006
Benjamin Franklin, Jay Gatsby and Me!
On Monday, after my monthly writer’s group meet-up, I was spurred into action with regards to an idea that I have been kicking around for about a month now.
It’s been about half a year (or more!) since I had a decent submission for our group which means that the same amount of time has passed since I made significant progress in my WIP.
The problem is that it seems like there is not enough time in a week to do everything that I need to do, let alone to do the things that I want to do. I wonder if that makes me more likely to get sucked into hours of Friends, Seinfeld and Simpsons re-runs.
Benjamin Franklin devised a system to train himself to be as virtuous a man as he could be. He chose 13 virtues and made a checklist to track his progress in incorporating them into his behaviour. This idea of self-improvement was echoed in The Great Gatsby (which we are reading this week in class). I have decided to overlook the grim end to The Great Gatsby and create my own version of these systems.
Although I’ve been denying it for years, I’m a touch analytical and I like tracking progress with graphs and charts and things. At the same time, I squirm under overly strict schedules. In high school I was always trying out hourly after-school schedules but they never worked -- even when I scheduled fun things in too.
Last night, I figured out that there are 16 usable hours/day which adds up to 112 hours/week. I identified all the things I want to/need to focus on and allotted a certain amount of time to them.
This is how it all breaks down:
Class – 6 hrs/week
Work – 22.5 hrs/week
Writing – 7 hrs/week
School Work – 12 hrs/week
Cleaning – 3 hrs/week
Traveling (to work, school etc) – 5 hrs/week
That adds up to 55.5 hrs/week that is used up, and 56.5 free hrs/week. It’s surprising how much time there is in a week when it is laid out like that.
I’m going to make a chart that shows all of the above categories and fill in the hours done/category as I go. My free hours will be spent doing whatever I want without that nagging feeling that I should be doing something else.
I was born in the year of the Horse and one of the horsey qualities that I have is that I am good at starting projects and not fantastic at the follow through. I’m hoping this will get me motivated and ultimately, save me from a future of boring beige cubicles. ;)
So why am I publishing this on my blog?
Even if no one reads it, it’s out there. One thing I learned from first year Psych is that, if you publicly commit to something, you’re more likely to get it done.
So here I go!
It’s been about half a year (or more!) since I had a decent submission for our group which means that the same amount of time has passed since I made significant progress in my WIP.
The problem is that it seems like there is not enough time in a week to do everything that I need to do, let alone to do the things that I want to do. I wonder if that makes me more likely to get sucked into hours of Friends, Seinfeld and Simpsons re-runs.
Benjamin Franklin devised a system to train himself to be as virtuous a man as he could be. He chose 13 virtues and made a checklist to track his progress in incorporating them into his behaviour. This idea of self-improvement was echoed in The Great Gatsby (which we are reading this week in class). I have decided to overlook the grim end to The Great Gatsby and create my own version of these systems.
Although I’ve been denying it for years, I’m a touch analytical and I like tracking progress with graphs and charts and things. At the same time, I squirm under overly strict schedules. In high school I was always trying out hourly after-school schedules but they never worked -- even when I scheduled fun things in too.
Last night, I figured out that there are 16 usable hours/day which adds up to 112 hours/week. I identified all the things I want to/need to focus on and allotted a certain amount of time to them.
This is how it all breaks down:
Class – 6 hrs/week
Work – 22.5 hrs/week
Writing – 7 hrs/week
School Work – 12 hrs/week
Cleaning – 3 hrs/week
Traveling (to work, school etc) – 5 hrs/week
That adds up to 55.5 hrs/week that is used up, and 56.5 free hrs/week. It’s surprising how much time there is in a week when it is laid out like that.
I’m going to make a chart that shows all of the above categories and fill in the hours done/category as I go. My free hours will be spent doing whatever I want without that nagging feeling that I should be doing something else.
I was born in the year of the Horse and one of the horsey qualities that I have is that I am good at starting projects and not fantastic at the follow through. I’m hoping this will get me motivated and ultimately, save me from a future of boring beige cubicles. ;)
So why am I publishing this on my blog?
Even if no one reads it, it’s out there. One thing I learned from first year Psych is that, if you publicly commit to something, you’re more likely to get it done.
So here I go!
