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Things I want to do:
Write
Learn Chinese
Learn programming
Improve mathematical skills
Read (books, fiction and non-)
Read (webcomics)
Play games
Watch stuff I want to watch
Learn to play keyboard instruments
Things I feel obligated to do:
Read flist, respond as much as I am able
Reading of on-line materials
Those lists are probably quite incomplete. There is a lot of overlap too, such as RSS feeds and webcomics I want to read, but for which this desire translates into a sense of obligation and taking on more than my capacity, so that there is no time left for me to do anything else.
I think one part of creating such a state of affairs is finding out how much time I should be setting aside for the things I want to do if I want to make them worthwhile. I doubt any of those would seem worthwhile to me at, frex, five minutes per week.
Disorganisation, poor use of time is a reason I have not been doing things I want to / think are important to do. It may take an hour or two to catch up on people's journals each evening but that still leaves plenty in which I do not do other things. Often I take to refreshing the page every half hour or so, casting a gradually wider net of subscribed things from which to pull reading material. An aimless sort of state. Does not help that posts of any length tend to take hours in composition. I seem to be a very slow writer. A very easily distractible one.
So it is not a lack of time, at least in that I do appear to have time available for many or most of the things I want to do. I just find myself not knowing how to choose between some as options and daunted by the prospect of attempting others. In an attempt to make this easier I intend to determine how much time is required for the especially skill- and learning-based activities. Maybe I can make a spinny wheel thing for the others.
Am getting anxious typing this, the previous paragraph especially. Feeling as if skin too tight and wanting to scream frustrated, to think of trying to make a choice between activities and actually doing them.
The other part of this (assuming there are only two) is getting away from these feelings of obligation about activities I do not necessarily wish to be pursuing at the time, this feeling that I must keep up with and read everything I subscribe to and not even cull that selection so long as I possess the capacity to make pretension of reading it. 'Read LiveJournal' is not what I wish my default activity to be. More than that I am wanting to be able to easily move on to other activities or even go to those first.
This is hard, akin to fingernails on chalkboard (akin, not the same). May just have to accept pain as a consequence of doing what I want until I become accustomed to it. Much of this is due to slipping into the easy. I tend to be engaged in other settling activities when I open my browser, such as eating something I do not want to get on the keys, and so settle on flist as something to keep myself occupied while doing this. But that tends to lead to reading the rest too, and once I have done that I am well settled into a passive mode. It becomes difficult to shift out of that into actively doing something. Even other sorts of reading are stressful to switch to because of the way I have things (mentally) set up.
Catching up still seems useful to me. I do in fact want to read what other people have posted on their journals and to respond if I have responses to offer. However, it does not seem to do me any good to be where I start. I think it would be more useful for me to check first my email (as something which may actually require timely attending to), responses to my own posts (included in email), and subscribe to notifications to any posts I may want to follow (again, covered by email) so that I do not have to scroll through the page to find them and consequently am less likely to slip into reading the whole thing. Then, move on to the doing of other activities with the reading of the 'friends page' later in the evening.
This still runs the risk of being 'caught', by friends chatting or links or something catching the eye. Less, though. Maybe even easier to slip away from. Friends, of course, are not something to avoid normally, but hopefully would be understanding if I were doing also something else. Tonight I was excited by the prospect of finishing this reading early and being relatively obligation-free for the evening, yet indecision and stress at the prospect of choosing has led to my doing none of the things I thought I might. Also to writing this.
I think having some sort of framework to operate in would help me with this. Once I know what the various things I want to do will require in terms of time invested I can arrange to have that time available and an awareness of it. I think this level of structure would actually help me to be more flexible once I have named and measured bits of time to rearrange. More clearly seeing what is being traded off against what and where.
And of course there is homework to be fit in and hopefully later employment.
Write
Learn Chinese
Learn programming
Improve mathematical skills
Read (books, fiction and non-)
Read (webcomics)
Play games
Watch stuff I want to watch
Learn to play keyboard instruments
Things I feel obligated to do:
Read flist, respond as much as I am able
Reading of on-line materials
Those lists are probably quite incomplete. There is a lot of overlap too, such as RSS feeds and webcomics I want to read, but for which this desire translates into a sense of obligation and taking on more than my capacity, so that there is no time left for me to do anything else.
I think one part of creating such a state of affairs is finding out how much time I should be setting aside for the things I want to do if I want to make them worthwhile. I doubt any of those would seem worthwhile to me at, frex, five minutes per week.
Disorganisation, poor use of time is a reason I have not been doing things I want to / think are important to do. It may take an hour or two to catch up on people's journals each evening but that still leaves plenty in which I do not do other things. Often I take to refreshing the page every half hour or so, casting a gradually wider net of subscribed things from which to pull reading material. An aimless sort of state. Does not help that posts of any length tend to take hours in composition. I seem to be a very slow writer. A very easily distractible one.
So it is not a lack of time, at least in that I do appear to have time available for many or most of the things I want to do. I just find myself not knowing how to choose between some as options and daunted by the prospect of attempting others. In an attempt to make this easier I intend to determine how much time is required for the especially skill- and learning-based activities. Maybe I can make a spinny wheel thing for the others.
Am getting anxious typing this, the previous paragraph especially. Feeling as if skin too tight and wanting to scream frustrated, to think of trying to make a choice between activities and actually doing them.
The other part of this (assuming there are only two) is getting away from these feelings of obligation about activities I do not necessarily wish to be pursuing at the time, this feeling that I must keep up with and read everything I subscribe to and not even cull that selection so long as I possess the capacity to make pretension of reading it. 'Read LiveJournal' is not what I wish my default activity to be. More than that I am wanting to be able to easily move on to other activities or even go to those first.
This is hard, akin to fingernails on chalkboard (akin, not the same). May just have to accept pain as a consequence of doing what I want until I become accustomed to it. Much of this is due to slipping into the easy. I tend to be engaged in other settling activities when I open my browser, such as eating something I do not want to get on the keys, and so settle on flist as something to keep myself occupied while doing this. But that tends to lead to reading the rest too, and once I have done that I am well settled into a passive mode. It becomes difficult to shift out of that into actively doing something. Even other sorts of reading are stressful to switch to because of the way I have things (mentally) set up.
Catching up still seems useful to me. I do in fact want to read what other people have posted on their journals and to respond if I have responses to offer. However, it does not seem to do me any good to be where I start. I think it would be more useful for me to check first my email (as something which may actually require timely attending to), responses to my own posts (included in email), and subscribe to notifications to any posts I may want to follow (again, covered by email) so that I do not have to scroll through the page to find them and consequently am less likely to slip into reading the whole thing. Then, move on to the doing of other activities with the reading of the 'friends page' later in the evening.
This still runs the risk of being 'caught', by friends chatting or links or something catching the eye. Less, though. Maybe even easier to slip away from. Friends, of course, are not something to avoid normally, but hopefully would be understanding if I were doing also something else. Tonight I was excited by the prospect of finishing this reading early and being relatively obligation-free for the evening, yet indecision and stress at the prospect of choosing has led to my doing none of the things I thought I might. Also to writing this.
I think having some sort of framework to operate in would help me with this. Once I know what the various things I want to do will require in terms of time invested I can arrange to have that time available and an awareness of it. I think this level of structure would actually help me to be more flexible once I have named and measured bits of time to rearrange. More clearly seeing what is being traded off against what and where.
And of course there is homework to be fit in and hopefully later employment.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 22:44 (UTC)From:Seems like you haven't prioritised any of these. Which are more important to you? Which are more in line with your values? I learn at an Art-Business course at university that in general, 80% of ones time produces 20% of one's output, and only 20% produces the remaining 80%. In short, we tend to fritter our time away on things that in the short term produce less. Nothing wrong with that of course, but worrying about what one "ought" to do over what one is doing can be very counter-productive.
If it stops being fun, stop doing it. I no longer read my LJ every day. I go into Second Life less. I'm enjoying each more. When in doubt, simplify and prioritise.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 15:32 (UTC)From:But it is going to be useful. Therefore, I recommend that you take it in small steps, and in a few years you will be getting somewhere.