Priorities …

Schedules are good for me because they let me have things to do when I have free time. But they’re also good for me because they help me to set priorities in those time blocks as well … a point that I’m becoming rather aware of with my new sporadic free time.

See, when I have unscheduled free time, I always have two things to think about. One is, of course, what I have time to do. And the other is what it would be best for me to do right now. The second is where prioritization comes in, but it’s more complicated than just taking the thing that’s on the top of my priority list that I have time to do. Sure, that’s one approach, but it doesn’t take into account all sorts of other factors that determine what the best thing to do is.

So, take these last few weeks where work has been a bit unpredictable but where I’ve certainly had more time than usual, but where I’m also building towards heading off on vacation for quite some time. The top things on my priority list — the things I most want to do — are projects, chess, and things like that. But for projects, that’s what I’m supposed to spend most of my time doing when I’m off, and chess is something that I have to figure out if I want it on my schedule after New Year’s Day. Is it the best use of my time to do those? As another consideration, I still have a lot of horror movies to get through, and also know that I won’t have time to get through them when I’m on vacation because the times where I could be watching them I’ll be finishing Charmed and watching Babylon 5. I do want to do those, and so where does that fit in here?

So my decision was to focus more in the evenings and in my free time on watching some of those horror movies, with the goal of getting through the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series before my vacation. That seems to be the best thing to do right now, and it’s working fairly well.

Schedules do that over the long haul, filling in a day with things that are lower priority but, nevertheless, letting me get things done and so feel that things are coming off my list. Which is important for someone who’s been on an accomplishment kick for the past several months …