Name a few major areas of your life that you find really satisfying—roles, projects, requirements; whatever you want to call them. Now, for each of them, what are you doing to maintain or move forward with them, and how much time are you devoting to them each week? It needn’t be a lot, but there should be some time on each one each week. If not, why not schedule ninety minutes sometime in the next week for each one?
I tried this exercise recently, and here are the five roles that I’ve identified:
- Writer
- Animation Director
- Cook
- Professor
- Samurai Programmer
And here are the main projects for each:
- Writer — Giant Armors, my young adult novel
- Animation Director — On hold as I
re-think my approach - Cook — Cooking all my own food, usually a big meal with leftovers twice a week, plus an ongoing supply of cookies, ice cream, muffins, and bread (the latter from the bread machine)
- Professor — Syllable University (now defunct)
- Samurai Programmer — A secret for now
I realized that I really haven’t set aside much time for some of these. I’m keeping up fine with cooking, and I’ve moved forward a bit on Giant Armors. But I really would benefit from setting aside time just for these. And I should have some other spare time surrounding these; it’s not like I’ll be spending four hours every evening on all this.
On the other hand, I’ve tried scheduling my time before, and it usually turned out poorly. I tended to