Time Management and Me

Spending time with your special someone is a privilege that is given to a worthy person. Nowadays, time is of the essence. It's a thing more valuable than money and money won't compensate for time lost, I think. It's something that takes effort from both parties. It's something I'm desperately trying to make more of.

Looking back at the past couple of months, it seems like everything was a blur. Day after day, I went on with my daily routines like going to work, attending to social obligations, and more importantly for me, taking my only known form of escape, sleep. From this short list, I would say that it is pretty easy to manage them. Unfortunately, there's more than meets the eye.

I've said it before that I'm on a compressed work week. That eats up almost 65% of my entire 24-hour day (including my traveling time and the time I use to prepare for work). Usually, 5% - 10% of it is allotted to some miscellaneous activity that was not previously planned. If you ask me, I'd never accept any more responsibilities outside of the initial 65% of my day but there's usually some unplanned activity that needs to be addressed immediately, so that's the 5% - 10% for. With those 2 parts of my day, it only leaves me 6 to 8 hours of sleep per day. I think that it might be more or less the status quo for an average Filipino male's daily sleep but my body needs 8 to 9 hours a day to function properly. That's just me. That's something I was accustomed to. I tried to change that but I failed.

Moving on, I have 3 days off from work. Here's how I try to juggle these remaining 72 hours of my week. For the past couple of months, I've been using some of that time for volleyball practice and the volleyball games. There's also the cheer dance practices that just came up a couple of weeks ago (I only play a minor part in this event, though). I also allot some of it for my family. This is where some quality time is given to them. I owe them so much and the best gift I can think of to give them is my time and yet it's proving to be quite challenging. Within these 3 days, I also spend sometime with my best friends. It's usually a couple of hours for dinner, a cup of coffee, and a bucketful of talk. Other than the aforementioned, most of the non-work related time goes to "T" (No names?? :D).

It seems to me that I'm trying to justify how I manage my time, successfully or unsuccessfully for that matter. I've decided that I'm going to rate my time management performance as "average". Unfortunately, that is not enough for me. An "outstanding" is what I want to achieve. Personal assessment is harder than a panel of directors, I think.

So what am I trying to point out? I want more time. I want to spend more time with "T". I want to spend more time with my family. I want to spend more time with my entire circle of friends. I want to spend more time for myself. Everyone I mentioned holds so close to my heart. They made me who I am at the moment.

Hhmmm... It's back to the drawing board for me.