Day: February 26, 2024

I want to continue my scheduling talk from yesterday, because I feel that there is more to be said on the subject. I decided to get ‘granular’ on the calendar as I slept, and the sub-mind came up with some thoughts. Primarily, the sub-mind came up with a different way of thinking. I started by adding travel time to the calendar. If you look at my responsibilities to people other than myself (which I mark in red on my calendar) you find that I have 3hrs of responsible time (75 x 2). If you add to that the travel time the full time moves to 4 hours. There are also office hours, which I have been thinking about the wrong way for years. Office hours are about where I have to be vs. what I need to be doing. In essence, it is a form of open time. I could be grading, I could be taking meetings with students (which happens more often than not this semester), I could be prepping future classes. All of these are things on my daily to-do, so blocking off these office hours as a thing unto themself is a mistake.

So we find ourselves back at 4 hours. That time is fixed. The block time I wish to devote to being available to the Lady Talis is fixed as well on certain days. However, that time isn’t entirely accounted for, so perhaps some other things should be allowed for in that nightly space. Perhaps I should give space for blips–30 minute or less activities (one or even two) during the evening that make sense as cooperative affairs or to be done when she takes her own time during that block.

In other words, I do have time for accomplishing all things, but I need to consider looking at the calendar a bit more sternly and asking myself what I can make of particular hours. Can I write from 7-9 M-Th? What would that accomplish/what would I need to be on top of for that to become a reality? How else can I build out a day that includes what makes me hapy and time for the things I need to maintain and to grow?

It feels fitting that on the first day of the new Talis year (post 366 means version 7 started a year ago!), I look at the concept of scheduling and reflect on how I spend my time and how to better spend that time. Yes, I know there are AI for that. Let me start by saying what most people are commonly calling AI is not actually AI. This post by Amazon does a fairly good job of sorting out the discussion. When most people talk about AI and fears of AI what they are really talking about is Artificial General Intelligence. When people use chatbots or gpt, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformers what we are talking about are retrieval algorithms that can process information based on specific training and questioning. They ain’t thinking bots, y’all.

But that wasn’t the point of this post. Not really. Actually I am considering Skedpal as a tool to help optimize my calendar, but the facts are the calendar is hardly the issue. The issue for me is that I waste entire blocks of time on, well, nothing. I need to get better at not doing that and being more productive during the blocks where I actually do observe Butt in Chair philosophy. For example, I plan to get to work early tomorrow–6 AM I’ll be in the home office cooking up the plan for the week. I could cook up that plan post blog when I have probably 15 to do so, but I am going to play Apex, because… I am. These are the choices that shape my life.

Algorithms are very good at telling us the best time to do things, but the truth is that we need to be wiling to sit down and do them. I will try and honor that this week by getting back to the weekly checklist and using that to ensure I am doing what I am supposed to be doing every day.