Cascade Crew

[Guest]

Dear Lama

I was wondering how does one manage a full time job, school, car hobby, girlfriend, and active social life. I can't seem to manage it all something suffer. How do you scedual your life?


Falling apart

[Guest]

Dear Falling Apart,

Life is often crazy. We live in the 21st century, fast paced, and busy. It is hard for a young lad to keep it all together. As you seem to have found out, jugling all these tasks is a major challange. I have seen lots of theory's on time managment, many of them will give you steps that may looks something like this:

- Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time
- Plan to make the best use of the time available
- Leave enough time for things you absolutely must do
- Preserve contingency time to handle 'the unexpected'
- Minimize stress by avoiding over-commitment to others

This all sounds great, and maybe works for some people. I say hog-wash. I would spend more time planning, than doing. Obviously time is not something you have an abundance of, so spending 2 hours, planning the next 6 hours, is just plain crazy talk. I sure don't want to be the crazy anal retentive arse, who is constantly "scheduling". I would gather that you also do not want to be that blue-tooth clad wanker, running between power meetings. So, I say throw convential wisdom out the window, else you end up like every other convential person out there, who failes at this task you are strugling with.

So, Mr. Lama, you say...What is your plan? Ahh, my young padawan, here it comes.

Stop caring. Its that simple. Stop planning. Stop worrying about it. Do what you want, when you want. Be the master of your own time, don't let other peoples expectations ruin you. If they don't expect anything, they can't be disapointed.

I do this, I operate on a "no more than 24 hours in advance" system. That is, I don't worry about stuff beyond the current 24 (with the exception of things like plane tickets, that are often hard to get on that short of notice, or things that require time-off from work to be scheduled). Other than that, it is first come, first serve. You call, and want to get a beer tonight...sure, I'm not out getting a beer now, I can do it now. The car broke... I'm not out having a beer... I better fix it now. The girlfriend wants to watch a movie... oops, I'm out having a beer right now...hmm...well, I should be done with my 6 beers in an hour, I'll swing by after that.

You see, it's really easy. Now, if you are all about multi-tasking, you can get that much more time. Like the car hobby and the girl-friend. That one is easy. Go for a fun drive, to say Mt St Helens with your car buddies. Set your cell phone on speaker phone, and get a tape recorder of you saying "uhh huh... yeah... ohh realy... yup...ohhh...uhh huh...". Just let it play, while your GF yapps away for an hour. She will feel like you really "listen to her", at the same time, you got your car hobby box checked off at the same time.

If you just follow those easy steps, you my friend will be just fine.

No Longer Caring.
The Lama