When I was in junior high, I used to make these elaborate schedules for myself during summer vacation. I would try to plan, hour by hour, what I would do so I would get as much as possible accomplished. They’d look something like this:
7:00 a.m. Work out
8:00 a.m. Walk the dog
8:30 a.m. Eat breakfast
9:00 a.m. Study German (I tried to teach myself German one summer. I was doing well until the book I had switched to Old German script in about chapter nine)
10:00 a.m. Read
12:00 p.m. Lunch
12:30 p.m. Go for a bike ride
2:00 p.m. Study French (Learned to read some basic French but have a horrendous accent)
3:00 p.m. Write
6:00 p.m. Eat dinner
7:00 p.m. Read or write (I thought I was being generous by giving myself a choice)
I would stick to this schedule for about four days before I started staying up late to watch David Letterman, sleeping in, working on my tan, hanging with friends, and doing whatever else it is a nerdy 13-year-old girl does. Now that I’m unemployed, I’ve toyed with the idea of making a schedule again, but it seemed a little too OCD. Then I saw this great article on The99Percent.com on manifestos for art, business, and life. I was particularly taken with Leo Tolstoy’s Ten Rules for Life, which he reportedly wrote when he was 18. Number 5 on his list reads: “Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for every minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater.”
Having a manifesto sounds a lot cooler than having a schedule.
Tolstoy’s rules might not work in real life, but they perfectly describe the way to construct one helluva novel. thanks for putting up his rules. I hadn’t seen them bef4.
Thanks for your comment, Art. Yeah, not all Tolstoy’s rules work. For instance, #6 is Stay away from women. Um, I get the intention, but perhaps it should be something like “Don’t entangle yourself in romantic relationships unless you feel like wasting a lot of time that could be spent writing.”
I stumbled across this post a bit ago: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/11/10/why-your-blog-is-not-going-to-make-you-rich-or-pay-the-bills/
Don’t really care about the blogging to pay the bills aspect, but the thing I like about it is the short term/mid-term/long term goals. It makes a ton of sense.
Anyway, it is really tough to set a schedule and keep to it while unemployed. I’ve been having a heck of a time with it myself, but I try to be mindful of doing things that initiate forward progress on all my goals.
Thanks for the link to problogger. I haven’t seen it before. I’m hopeful that the marketing plan I worked on as my lay-off date approached unconsciously included short-term, medium-term, and long-term plans. Still need to do more about the short-term income though. 🙂