Last night I set my alarm for 5.30am, a backup for 5.40am and an “Oh crap, I really need to get up!” alarm for 6.10am. These are the same alarms I set for getting up for work Monday through Friday. My reason for doing this was I had today all planned out!
By 7am: eat breakfast, get dressed and finish watching a video I had previously started, about Agile project management.
By 10am: finish watching and writing up notes on this weeks learning for the Machine Learning course I am taking.
By 11.30am: sketch some rough guitar ideas for a song.
As it is a Saturday, I thought it would be good to have everything I wanted to do completed by midday, so I could chill and make some plans for next week. However, things do not always go according to plan … I slept in until about 10am, then watched some TV, had some breakfast and then realised I hadn’t actually done anything I wanted to do!
My wife went out with some friends this afternoon, so I took the time to find some ideas for calendar organisation, and turned to the ever useful Thomas Frank on Youtube for some advice. Although his videos are mostly geared towards students and learning, I think the ideas and tips are quite beneficial to anyone looking to increase their productivity.
After I finish writing this little post I am going to implement some of the ideas from Thomas Frank, and plan out my week. Where I really struggle is I have a full time job which takes me from 7.30 am to 5 pm everyday, which commute time either side. This massive chunk of every day is taken away, and leaves me with very little time first thing, and a few hours in the evening to get anything done. A lot of the time when you watch videos about planning out your time, they are aimed at the full time self employed, or entrepreneurs who have a lot more time to be able to spend on developing their businesses and make their own personal time. Ultimately, this is where I would like to get to, but preparing for a transition is a long one, especially when you are not 100% certain on the exact path you want to take!
Hopefully over the next few months I will be able to set a focus on the direction I want to head, but for now I am all about obtaining new skills and learning as much as possible. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have to keep my brain active!
Nick
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