Box Project 002: Mandatory Vs. Voluntary Activities.

Ironic how I've been procrastinating on my time-management project ...

Anyway. About a month of school has passed without much work being done on Box Project. Actually, this kind of turned into a positive, since definite rhythms have developed in my schedule and I can now say with a good degree of certainty what kind of things fill up any given day. And I've come to the sad conclusion that ... yeah ... this is really something I should look into.

I consider myself fairly productive when the need arises, but more often than not I could probably find better things to do with my time than surfing the Web and read about the [adjective] [issue/video/article] of the day and listening to music (not that the latter is inherently a bad thing). I know I can be more efficient and make better use of my hours. So I figure the first step in becoming more productive would be to identify both my "voluntary" activities (that is, time spent not in class, on personal hygiene, eating meals, sleeping, etc.) and the things that need to be done on a daily basis. Off a 60-second brainstorming session:

Mandatory Activities

• attending class
• eating meals
• personal hygiene
• sleeping
• doing household chores
• running errands

Voluntary Activities

• surfing the Web
• consuming media
  
  • reading
  • listening to music
  • watching TV/movies
• writing
• studying
• working out

I'm thinking that these lists will become longer/shorter over time as I become more specific/consolidate. The question is basically "How much micro-managing should be done to ensure I make the most use of my time?"

Now, the following step will be determining how much of each Free-Time Activity is feasible on a regularly-scheduled basis after the items in the Daily Operations list have been completed. More of that in my next entry, after I get some estimates and averages.