Ken's Take: Balance Grasshopper

Picture by Hamed Saber via Flickr.com

"Hey Ken! Where was the post from Monday? I thought you said you were going to be more consistent?" Well, I am being consistent, I'm keeping the balance. Remember the Ken's Take that I gave a day off at the beginning of the month? Yeah? Well, after that Magnificent Monday wanted a day off too, so I was a bit obligated to oblige. "You forgot, didn't you?" Silence! I kill you!

And so, it's Wednesday again. If you absolutely must know why I did not post on Monday, it's because, well... I may or may not have gotten the new expansion for WoW, i.e. Cataclysm. (In case you're wondering, no, the graphics are not that good in the actual game. And thank goodness for that because I think that my computer would have a hernia trying to play the content.) So... I got a little pre-occupied Sunday evening. Oh yeah, that's when I write these posts btw, (or try to at least) the night before as a general rule of thumb. That would be why they are posted at 6:00 am (again, at least they should be.) If you thought that I woke up at 5:00 am just to write a post for you, well then, you were mistaken. Although, not out of the realm of possibility, there are only three real reasons for me to be up that early.

1. I am dropping my wife off at work and she is opening. (Which is about 4:30 am at Starbucks.)
2. I have insomnia and simply did not go to sleep.
3. I had took some Melatonin and had some nightmares about Dobby eating my skin off. Don't believe me? Nightmares and Vivid Dreams are on the list of side effects. Go ahead and click that link and see for yourself. That stuff doesn't screw around, I wake up terrified at night sometimes. This might explain why I did not feel as sympathetic during Dobby's death in the new movie, because I was secretly hoping that his on screen death would keep him outta my nightmares.

Anyways, that's not what this post is about. This post is about Balance. And Grasshoppers. But mostly balance. That picture is about all that I'll be talking about regarding grasshoppers. It's cool isn't it? Sexy almost. Okay. Not sexy. But cool at least.

BALANCE!!!

That got your attention, didn't it? Notice my use of all caps and the use of no less than 2, no more than 4 exclamation marks to signify urgency. So balance, "Why Ken, what's this all about? Being able to walk on a thing log across a treacherous ravine?" Well, in short, no. No it's not. It is however, about trying to balance your life with, well, life. It's come to my attention over this past semester that I live an incredibly busy lifestyle. Between extra-cirricular activities, working in my lab, going to school full time, being married, a gamer, and maintaining a decent social life I had my work cut out for me. Which is why when I figured out that I'd only need to work for around 40 hours a week at my lab over the Christmas break I was absolutely ecstatic. 40 hours? That's it? I'll be bored. Being busy all the time though has definitely taken its toll on me, however, I was able to keep it up for a great deal of the semester without falling to utter pieces. Why was I able to do so? Balance my dear readers. Balance.

Time Management is something that I am actually surprisingly good at, which surprises most people that know me since I am consistently late to just about everything. Why am I always late, well that's for a different post but let's just say that it's mostly because I lack a decent sense of time. When I think 5 minutes have passed, in actuality about 15 have passed. When I think it's been around half an hour, it's actually only been about 7 minutes. However, the relationship between the concept of time and time management are not so intertwined that they cannot be individually accounted for. Counter-intuitive, I know, but that's how it is. Now being good at time management is actually a whole lot easier than one might think. The key is consistency/diligence and delegation. "What do you mean," you ask. Well, what I mean is that the key, for me at least, was to delegate away my mental burdens. Facebook, Google Calendar, Smartphones, etc. All of these things are wonderful, wonderful things in my opinion. Why? Because they free up your memory. I spend very little time during the semester wondering what homework assignment is due when, or when the next exam is, or when I have time for X because at the beginning of the semester I sat down for about 2 hours and laid it out. I pulled all of my syllabuses (Syllabi? Syllabis?) and went through and entered all of my homework/exam information, along with anything else I was able to plan in advanced such as my extra-curricular activities, into my google calendar. I set up appropriate reminders for one time things and exams. After that, my life got much simpler.

See, the thing I've come to find over the semesters is that I don't know when things are happening. It wasn't once or twice that I walked into a class and "Oh, there's an exam today? Well golly, it's a damned good thing I decided to come to class today!" This inevitably led to a lot of stress over when things were due, what was due, etc. I also found it difficult to keep things from overlapping, e.g. my wife's birthday dinner and time to work on that project worth 15% of my grade. And so, by delegating the task of keeping track of things from a piece of paper to an automatic machine that will literally send me a text message 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week, 2 days before, and the day of an exam I never really forgot about an exam or to study. I remembered to start planning my wife's birthday gift 3 weeks in advanced because Google Calendar sent me a text saying, "Hey! You're wife's birthday is in 3 weeks, figure that stuff out now!"

The other key to time management, in my opinion, is consistency/diligence. "Consistency about what," you ask. Well, upkeep of the marvelous calendar system you've set up. If your friend invites you to "that thing that you should go to because you feel bad about ditching him earlier for a date with some girl that didn't really work out all that well because it turns out that she was totally into dominating you and you just weren't into that sort of thing," then you should really put it into your calendar so that you don't forget about it. The nice thing about technology these days though is compatibility, or lack thereof in some cases. These days you can tell Facebook, which so very many people seem obsessed with using these days, to keep your calendar up to date. What does this mean? It means when someone invites you to their double-deuces birthday party and you say, "Rock on! I'll totally be there!" or "IDK, I should maybe not get smashed the night before a final exam, I'll let you know" then Facebook will conveniently place a slot onto your calendar for you to see. It is then your job to check your calendar every so often, or have it e-mail you an agenda... you are checking your e-mail on a daily basis right? O.o

Anyways, those are the two things that helped keep my time management in check throughout the semester. Obviously, being able to accurately estimate how long things will take and planning accordingly is also another thing to take into account. However, if you google time management just about every website you come across will tell you about that so I don't think it's really needed that I repeat the information from some random site here. But these are two things that helped me tremendously. Have anything you'd like to add, let me know in the comments.

-Ken