What Do I Spend My Time On? (Written 21/7/2019)

After watching Jorbs’s video, I have been inspired to think a little bit more deeply about not only the things that I do in the course of the day, but more generally about the types of things that I spend my time on. If we can group things into classes that are fair and representative, there may be approaches that can be applied more widely and more efficiently.

In the spirit of the fantastic rant that was posted in r/fitness, I will be mindful of falling into the min/max trap here. Execution is not a given. I am not trying to transmute effort in the actual act of life into the time spent planning here. I am however undergoing this exercise of thinking and planning so that I might apply as much effort as possible to the things that really matter to me.
There’s a few different classes of activity that jump out at me immediately:

• Appointments: This is any sort of activity where I have agreed to be somewhere or do something on someone else’s schedule. Loosely speaking these activities are fixed in their time and location. Doctor’s appointments, interviews, coaching calls with Todd even work at a job would fall in this class. My time is not my own in this class.
• Leisure: This one is quite simple. It’s anything that i’m doing mostly for the sake of doing it, when i’m not doing things that explicitly work towards a big outcome that I want or to the person I want to become. Leisure can be high or low quality, and structured or unstructure
• Upkeep: These are tasks that must be done on a frequent, consistent (perhaps daily) basis that allow me to continue to function as an effective, reasonably happy human being. Some of these things are daily, such as doing the dishwasher and tidying the kitchen/my bedroom, and keeping myself clean and well presented. Other things are on more of a weekly rhythm, such as doing a weekly food shop, preparing meals in advance for the week ahead, making a plan for the week ahead etc. Staying on top of things would be another succinct way of describing this class.
• Setup: This describes things that require an initial investment of time to get to the upkeep stage.
• Stuff: Loosely, this class describes tasks. Things that have to be done but are of a one-off nature. I might need to go to a specific shop for a specific item, make a phone call to my bank, send an email, go get a haircut.

This is not going to be exhaustive or complete. There are some things that may overlap, and some that may not fit cleanly into any class. The point is that it gives me a FRAMEWORK, a place to start thinking about how I approach the stuff that comes up in my life. It will naturally become more refined as I become more experienced.

The Weekly Schedule and Its Constraints.

The key tool that I will use to organise my time and effort is a weekly schedule. This outlines everything that will happen in the course of the week that can be scheduled in advance.
As far as I have figured out, there are two constraints to the weekly schedule that must be imposed in a top-down manner. The first is the appointments (including employment) that are scheduled for that week. Secondary to scheduled appointments is accounting for any associated travel time.

What is the appropriate way to tackle each class?

Appointments: Keep a calendar of some description that details the date, time and location of each appointment. When a new appointment is made, it should be added to this calendar. This should be reviewed once a week to look ahead to the following week. Upcoming appointments are then placed in the commensurate slot in the week.

My Ideal System

Have a calendar that holds information on all appointments .Build a weekly schedule skeleton that is based on my waking hours and appointments. This would typically be done on a Sunday for the following week. Once the skeleton is built, I will write out a list of all the things that I wish to accomplish this week. This would typically be hours of studying/study sessions, training sessions, time to spend on other projects, high quality leisure, low quality leisure Distribute these things across my weekdays Each morning, review the schedule for that particular day to refocus.

UPDATE - 24/07/2017 The Google Calendar and Google Tasks combo has everything (I think) that I need to make the system above work:

• It has weekly and daily schedules, broken down hour by hour
• I can schedule recurring events for stuff that repeats weekly
• I can keep multiple lists for different tasks (weekly/daily)
• I can map the to-do's from Tasks straight into the calendar
• I can put appointments straight into it, so that they are automatically included into the schedule
• Most importantly, it puts my habit of using my laptop first thing in the morning to good use.As part of my morning routine, I will still use my laptop, but I will be doing so to look at the day's schedule, and allocating tasks and leisure time appropriately.

It will take a bit of practice to get this working to its full potential. Once all the parts are properly greased, this will be a fantastic tool that will provide me with so much more time than I thought I had.