I didn't post yesterday because I started reading Walden. I don't know why I haven't read that before. It's awesome. Maybe too extreme...I don't know. When I read books like that, especially Emerson or many of the great books from the pre-industrial revolution era, I feel like I'm living a life of narrow and shallow goals. They make me feel like I've enslaved myself with schedules and pressure to make other people happy (other people with similary narrow goals). They do, however, console me with their expressions of real, human dignity.

Rating for 12/5: 2

In the spirit of deflating system points, I'm trying to scrutinize myself more than before. Day 1 of my time log worked out so-so; today it has been much better. I started by writing down a task and how long it took. This leaves a significant amount of time unaccounted for. Today I'm doing it by time, not by activity. So theoretically I'll have some account for every minute of conscious time, even if I just write, "screwed around" or something like that. On to my score explanation.
The bad:
I got up late. I don't know when exactly, because, as I said, I was recording by activity, not by time. Getting a bad start negatively affects my morale for the rest of the day. I feel lazy, and I feel ashamed as I, for example, exercise outside in the middle of the day when the parking lot is empty, and the people I see are retired for the most part.
I spent 50 minutes eating breakfast, showering shaving, doing dental hygeine stuff, dressing, and getting my stuff prepared before I leave the house. This seems like too much time. One of the concrete goals I have for my time accountability system is getting a firm grasp on what I'll refer to as my daily overhead. Analogous to business overhead, this will encompass the basic activities that I need to do everyday in order to live a basic healthy and ethical life. This includes sleeping, eating, showering, cleaning, etc. Any real achievement on my part is going to happen in addition to these things. In other words, if all I do in a given day is overhead, I will have merely broken even (and if I'm not working, I'll have ended worse than I started the day). I want to take my overhead tasks, study how long I'm taking to do them, and streamline them. For example, I'm thinking that I should be able to shower, shave, and complete my dental hygeine in 15 minutes. In the coming days I'll strive to hold myself to that length of time and test whether or not it's a realistic yet efficient amount of time. If it is, I'll incorporate that into my schedule and try to make it a daily, habitual thing.
I spent a great deal of time yesterday preparing my resume for a job that it turns out I can't even take because of my schedule. It's main hours are from 3-7 Mon through Thurs, but I cook dinner for the house around 5 or 6 on Monday and Thursday every week. We could rework the house schedule, but I know it would be a huge pain for everyone else. Until this job is the only job available, I'll pursue less inconvenient options. However, instead of realizing this, I spent hours riding back and forth between my house and the computer lab, first realizing my resume file had somehow disappeared on the network, then going back to put it on a datastick, and then coming back too late to go into the place and actually submit it. On top of that, somehow it got smeared slightly with something, and I don't want to use them now anyway. I should have realized all of this and used my time for other things.
I have 2 hours and 45 minutes listed vaguely as "internet stuff" This is inexcusable. I know whatever I was looking at or doing didn't need to take that long.
I didn't accomplish much beyond my overhead.
The Good:
First and foremost, I didn't give up when I started encountering hugely obnoxious practical barriers. I could have easily put off the resume until tomorrow once I found the file missing, but I rode home again, and back to school again (in the snow) in order to finish what I had set out to do. That was virtuous. Speaking of this kind of thing, I'm going to give myself an automatic 1 anytime in the future that I just stop striving to achieve my goals on a particular day and say to myself, "I'll start tomorrow on a fresh day, get up early, get off to a good start, have good planning, etc." That line of thinking is attractive, but in the end it's garbage. Things always get messy, and we have to deal with imperfection. This I need to drill into myself, because I forget it all the time. No starting tomorrow, one needs to do the best one can at the time given the circumstances. What's good, as I was saying, was that I didn't do this.
I bought an excellent, and much needed, scarf for $1.05. The value to cost ratio on that purchase was huge, which is ideal.
Not only did I exercise as much as I told myself I was going to, but I completed my lifting routine in 45 minutes. In theory I'd be comfortable giving myself an hour for that activity, but if 45 minutes will suffice, then that's great. I didn't skimp on the specific drills either.
I made an awesome dinner, albeit with portions too small and without much time left to eat it.
Ok, I'm spending too much time on this. Accountability and critical evaluation is key, but after a point it becomes cumbersome and inefficient.

I'm back in this too.
Todays' rating will be posted tomorrow. In the meantime I want to relate some thoughts.

Project: In an effort to hold myself more accountable for my use of time, I want to record my activities and their duration throughout the day. I carry a bag almost everywhere I go, and throwing a pen and notebook in there would not be much of a burden. Taking it out and jotting down a note about time use doesn't seem too cumbersome either. I want to streamline my activities, especially routine, administrative tasks. For example, I'll record how long it takes to brush my teeth, shower, eat breakfast--basically how long it takes to get out of bed and get going. I'll scrutinize that task, and try to get those things done as efficiently as possible. I'll also get in the habit of glancing at my watch and holding myself more to a schedule, or at least an idea of how long an activity should take. Time is a non-renewable resource, and it's important to use it well. I could be using it much better, and one of the first steps one must take toward better management is a system of review and accountability. Hopefully my system isn't too cumbersome.
Observation: Flax oil makes a marked difference in my performance.
Observation: With some tasks, the manner in which it happens is not important beyond aesthetics, and consequently, I should be creative with those tasks and incorporate changes into them that make them easier or more appealing. For example, if I run for exerise, as long as I'm doing the activity for a prescribed amount of time, it doesn't hurt if I'm also listening to music. This is an obvious example, and maybe undermines the point I'm trying to make because of its obviousness. Basically, I have concepts of how certain tasks will look, in other words, what the experience of performing that activity will be like. I also think that it's possible to become enslaved to those concepts. In other words, you feel pressure not only to do the thing, but you feel pressure to do it in the way that you imagine it a-priori. I'm trying to eliminate the latter phenomenon, because it's unimportant beyond the aesthetic. Don't get me wrong, some tasks require to be done one way as opposed to another, even if the ostensible result is the same. This could be for ethical or practical reasons. However, there are several tasks where this is not the case. I want to take it upon myself to use my creativity to discern which tasks are of which nature and to implement changes to make the tasks like running more enjoyable and easier to execute with my will.
I had some other thoughts, but I've taken enough time on this post. If they're still relevent in the future, I'll post them at some other time. As I said, rating tomorrow.