Your Work- (or Non-) Week at Its Best

I am a young 24-year-old living in Los Angeles. It occurred to be quite a while ago that not only do I have a very long while before I even have to think about dying, but that I also know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. This was a very harsh thought since my life practically revolves around knowledge and having an understanding of the world around me. Not only this, but it seems that I have a major list in my head of things I should have learned by now, either through school or just in general. Obviously, having these ideals is somewhat unrealistic, but that is the nature of who I am- I set up unrealistic goals and by attempting to achieve them, I end up accomplishing more than I ever thought I could because of the way I organize my time. I then look back and think, hey, it's not perfect, but I'm a lot farther than I was when I started.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, life is too short to be worrying about what you aren't. But I do know that for me personally, I tend to accomplish things a lot more when I have no time to do anything. Meaning, when there is pressure on my schedule (usually from working for 8 hours a day), I find it's easier to  say to myself, "Sonya, you don't have all day to read through the 2,000 blogposts on your RSS feed today (or ever), but you DO have 15 minutes while your chicken is baking to look over your favorite ones," than to try to read through all of them in one day. Essentially, I won't get anything done if I have a whole day because I try to knock something unrealistic out.

YOU HAVE TO MICRO MANAGE. Setting up a big goal is great, but it's important to break it up into something manageable.

I decided today that I'm going to set up a weekly schedule to achieve small portions of my goals. Some of the things I have in mind are learning french, drawing, yoga stretching, pull up bar workouts, and watch movies/tv shows for Pop Culture reference. Since these are long term goals and don't have any particular moment where I want to say stop (yet), I am going to allocate a little time each week to ensure I at least do some of it consistently.

As of right now, I am working 10 hours a day doing freelance work (including travel time and lunch). So that takes up a chunk of my time. I am also cooking for about 1-2 hours when I'm at home, but I can multi-task. I need 8 hours of sleep. That leaves about 4 hours a day to get something done.

I think it's necessary to do stretching and some exercise every day to compensate for the sitting I have done in the past. We converted our desks at work to standing and I have a standing desk at home, but because I don't have time to be more active (going hiking every day, bike riding, etc.), I feel it's necessary to do these daily- or at least on weekdays. I think I will do 15 minutes of yoga stretching, and 15 of the pull up bar.

I tend to fall asleep when I watch movies late, so I have decided to start them at an earlier hour, so around 9-9:30. I will do that twice a week. Since the movies and TV shows will vary in time, I won't schedule anything after that just for the sake of finishing something. I can enjoy the rest of my night reading or doing something I feel is necessary.

I'm going to start off slow with French and say that I for sure need to work on my listening skills the most since even after I learn a phrase, I don't recognize it when it is said to me for the most part. So For this month, I'll focus on finding relatively easy podcasts and youtube videos with French in them and listen to something and write down as many words as I can recognize. If there is a way to double check my work (like subtitles or a manuscript), I'll look at that afterward. I'll come up with more exercises as I go along. So an hour, 3times a week so as not to burn myself out.

And for drawing, I would like to practice consistently, but again, don't want to burn myself out. I'll choose a topic and just draw what I feel like for the night since I'm just starting, and then I'll refine some exercises once I get comfortable. I'll pull from books, Google, and DeviantArt to start since not having any inspiration to draw was the primary reason for me not learning to draw sooner. Gotta keep the inspiration up! So I'll do something similar for drawing and french on the same nights so that I can do them more often (woo! efficiency!). Here's what my schedule looks like once I plug it all in!

Probably doesn't look like much, but think of it this way. If you already allocate time specifically FOR something, I feel you are setting yourself up for success. Also, look at the education model (one of the few good things that actually comes out of public school systems). Even in Elementary school, there are certain times laid out for certain subjects. The kids don't get bored with Social Studies ALL DAY and they keep the subjects frequent enough to actually help the kids retain knowledge and get into the habit.

I think this will work very well for me personally. And when my schedule changes, I'll just allocate more or less time to each subject, depending on how much focus I need on it.

TADA!

Now go make your own or come up with a system that works for you ;)

Life is too short to not be proactive.