Philosophy

A Rescued Procrastinator

Anybody who knows me pretty well knows that I don’t exactly run on a schedule. I often don’t finish doing homework until minutes before it’s due, and get into conflicts with my dad (or used to at least) about getting into the shower on time. It seems that I keep on waking up later and later every week. How am I going to survive if I keep putting everything off?

I’ve tried several methods for keeping myself organized and on track. I began with Devin’s weekly scheduler, in hopes of being able to remember to do everything that I plot out on it. After that failed, I set up my own spreadsheet, with three periods for each day (morning, school, and evening; on Saturday, school is replaced with daytime). This was extremely poor, receiving just one or two entries. I knew that I was seriously failing to keep myself heading straight.

Then came David Seah. His Printable CEO™ series looked like a viable solution. I browsed around his site for a while, looking at his forms and other articles (I have to say, he’s a beautiful writer). Last week, I took a deep look at his Task Progress Tracker Form. It’s mainly built for designers and other freelancers who work on individual projects, but I found that by filling in the project name box with “my Life / School”, I can use it for my own purposes.

A day later, I put it to the test. After getting hold of my most recent report card, my dad told me that I am going to be putting in at least an hour of effort toward my studies every night (yeah right). I happened to have some social studies homework due the next day, so I sat down with the textbook, papers and the form Approximately every fifteen minutes (as prescribed by the form), I filled in another bubble indicating that amount of time was spent on the particular task.

I’m still slacking off a bit now, but I feel like things are rolling now. I think this plan will need a week or two to settle in, at which point I will report back. Maybe i should try some of the other PCEO forms.

Writing Styles for Formal and Informal Communications

When the average person is in an instant message conversation, he won’t exactly use proper grammar and spelling (”lol” is a very common phrase). When writing a letter of recommendation to a university, one will spell check over and over again. People will talk differently under different conditions, and this surely shows it.

In an informal setting, such as instant messaging as I mentioned above, one needs to communicate quickly. Shortcuts for various words and phrases commonly overcome the need for correct spelling and grammar.

For formal communications, like when writing a letter, the quality of the writing will be very important to the recipient of the letter. One will generally take care to use correct spelling and grammar in his writing.

I often find myself following these “rules”. If you decide to pick them up, you will find that you can be both social and intelligent when communicating with others. if everyone follows my advice, we might have a better Internet (another piece of random advice).

The Family Moving Cycle

People, based on my very limited observations, move three or four times in their adult lives. I can say this because my family has moved. Here’s the deal:

1. After getting married
   Generally you will not want to live in your parents’ house after you get married. You have your own life, and most of the time, being under their rules and lifestyle isn’t such a great thing either past age eighteen.
2. After having a child
   I would think that after getting married you’ll settle in a small apartment, with not a ton of room for new family.
3. After having several more children
   Time to get out of that slightly bigger hole in the wall. A few more bedrooms would be nice.
4. After the kids are married, or retirement
   Now you don’t really need all that space, and less house means less money to spend on it.

This cycle will occur with most people today, so expect to be a part of it. This is really meant to be more of a heads-up type of post, not one with really useful info in it. However, there are some times when I just start talking about random but real things in life, and this is definitely random.

Comment Spam: More Than A Minor Annoyance

Although I do have the absolutely wonderful and I-can’t live-without-it Askimet plugin installed here, I still look through the messages it catches every few days. What’s worse than having to waste time even looking at them is trying to ignore what’s in them. Various prescription drugs (I’m keeping things G-rated over here), and links to what I will leave as explicit videos litter the Askimet Spam page litter my screen every time I look at it.

Eventually, someone is going to (or I will) say enough is enough, and just get rid of comments once and for all. We all hate weeding through spam emails (which affect a much greater majority of people than comment spam does), so why should we feel the smame about comments?

Shortness of Sleep

When you wake up in the morning, you feel like you just went to sleep a few minutes ago. “Why so soon?” That’s how I feel at about 7:00 every day. Perhaps the only way we can alleviate that feeling is to go to sleep at eight every night.