Thursday, June 12, 2008

Active Items on Task List: 36

Initially I had planned to go to bed at 10:30, but once I thought about it more, that seemed kind of unwise. I've been going to bed at 3 or 4 am, so lying down at 10:30 won't accomplish anything other than me lying in bed for a few hours. Instead, I decided to work on Kaplan until I get tired or until it's 2, whichever comes first, and over the next few days, I'll gradually scale back my bed time.
Here's an analysis of my time expenditures. What follows is my plan for the day and a comment in caps about how accurate my time allotment was: "1 hour to plan out meals 5:00-6:00 TOO MUCH TIME, I FINISHED IN 30 MINS/ 45 minutes to go shopping, 6:00-6:45 TOO LITTLE TIME, THIS TOOK AN HOUR/ Exercise from 6:45-7:15 THIS WAS RIGHT ON THE MONEY/ Dinner after, 7:15 to 8:30 THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE EXCEPT I HAD DISHES PILED UP FROM BEFORE, SO TODAY I JUST DIDN'T CLEAN UP ALL THE WAY. NORMALLY, IF I WERE TO MAKE WHAT I MADE TONIGHT, 45 MINUTES WOULD BE FINE FOR COOKING, EATING, AND CLEANING/ Watch 1 episode of the Wire, 8:30-9:30 THIS WAS EXACT, read for 1/2 hour 9:30-10:00 THIS WAS ALSO EXACT post/email/brush teeth 10-10:30 THIS WENT WAY OVER. I GOT A CALL, AND THEN I THOUGHT OF A FEW EMAILS THAT NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN. 10:30, go to bed THIS ISN'T THE PLAN ANYMORE"
The whole post/brush teeth/check emails thing is a little annoying. Some nights it takes 15 minutes, other nights it takes 2 hours. Theoretically I shouldn't do anything during that time that takes more than 5 minutes, and if something comes up that takes more than 5 minutes, I add it to the task list. Tonight it was partially because I forgot about that and partially because the e-mails seemed urgent, at least one of them. I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to write it. Typical week-day posting can be performed in 5-10 minutes, my oral hygiene takes maybe 5 minutes, and 15-25 minutes should be enough to Inspect my e-mails, i.e., see what I got generally, reply to some quick ones, and table the others to my task list. For tomorrow I'll try to be more strict about that.
During my reading time I inspectionally read Visions of a New Reality: The City and the Emergence of Modern Visual Culture by Frederic Stout.
Tomorrow: reply to housing e-mails, work on plans for Father's Day, spend 1/2 hour on French audio, work on Kaplan, check Visa statement for accounting (and write in routine audit day on calendar), plus the normal stuff. The order of priority if I finish my lesson is setting up my new computer with the MIT network and software, then transferring files, but I doubt I'll get that far.

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