Continuing the common theme of providing my readers with a background in my life, I am going to take this time to discuss a typical day. More specifically, a day in my life. Now if you have half a brain, then you have probably judged me thus far to be an interesting person. Well, my young friend, you are correct in your assump– lmao. I can’t even say that with a straight face. Honestly, my days are really boring. In the name of efficiency, I am a creature of habit. Every single day is almost identical in structure to how it did last week. Every day I wake up, I do stuff, then I go to sleep. But Greg, “when you recount your day, never say you woke up. That’s a waste of your time. That’s how every day has is begun since the dawn of man”. The astute of you will know what that is a quote from, but I won’t waste your time on that for now. I do, however, think it illustrates my philosophy for time management. So for the rest of your time reading this, you can learn about my week, why I organize it this way, and hopefully, gain a different perspective than your own.
Every morning starts with my alarm clock at 5:50am. I get ready for the next 5 minutes to be at the gym when it opens at 6:00. Working out gets me energized and focused for the day. I found that before I started working out early, I would waste time trying to shake off my morning funk. Going to the gym wakes me up, checks working out off my daily to-do list, and allows me to stay in my morning shower routine without showering more than once per day. Because everyone knows the best time to shower is in the morning (change my mind). This early routine also gets me at breakfast in time to skip the line at the omelet bar. I want to talk about nutrition and eating healthy at some point in a future post because I think it is all about habits and I want to make sure you all start good habits early. Software engineering is a dangerous lifestyle because we spend most of the day sitting down. Without the right diet, this can lead to negative health conditions later in life. After breakfast, I go back to my room to shower and get ready for the day. Like I said, I am a pretty boring person, so my outfits change between about seven different options (one for each day lol). I like to look my best, but I am not exactly good at matching clothes, so I am stuck with the seven outfits that (not gonna lie) my mom said: “work for me”.
Finally, at around 9:00am, I start work. Now because I am a college student, my schedule is a little unpredictable. I consider classes to fall under the category of ‘work’ just like homeWORK and work WORK. So I’m gonna call it all work. Now listen up because I am about to drop some premium college advice for you guys. The key to not missing anything in your calendar is actually having a calendar. BOOOOOOOM! That was the sound of your mind being blown. I know right? Who would have thought? But seriously, before you just straight up stop reading and never come back, let me explain a little bit. When you have a job where you work, say, 40 hours a week, your schedule is very consistent. You always know when you will have to be at work and when you will have free time. When you are in college, you may be walking to and from six different activities throughout the day. Whether they are classes, meals, meetings, appointments, or anything else in between, the average college student is almost never in the same building for even two events in a day. The only way to keep track of everything is with a calendar. This could be google calendar, apple calendar, or even (if you are old school) a physical calendar that you have to use a real pen for with like ink and stuff. If you are from the younger generation and aren’t sure what a pen is or how it works, you can probably find a tutorial on Youtube. Calendars are (unfortunately) the only way to turn chaos into order. If you want to get really into it (and I suggest you do!) you can color code the events, add locations, pictures, or special reminders that will help. In addition to all of those being helpful features, they will also help to motivate you to stick to your calendar because it will feel more like your own. I personally check my calendar about 100 times per day and sometimes only to stare in admiration at the beauty that I have created. To give you guys an idea of what I am talking about, here is what my calendar looked like a week from last semester:
Somewhere between all my events, I have lunch (preferably between 12 and 1) with some of my friends (I swear I do have them). After I am done working for the day, I relax with a couple youtube videos or an episode of The Office and then go to dinner. I try to take my time with dinner especially if my day was especially long. Not that I don’t get any homework done during the day, but for whatever reason, I am much more productive at night. Maybe it’s because I know I have to go to bed early and the time crunch motivates me. Maybe it’s just because the darkness makes me want to work… I honestly have no idea. Because after dinner, I am always hyper-focused. I usually complete all my assignments and then work on some personal projects as well between dinner and around 10:00 when I start to get ready for bed. This allows me to get into bed by 11:00 (it takes me an hour because my roommates usually distract me) and get enough sleep before my alarm goes off the next day at 5:50am. For a while, I had a really hard time falling asleep quickly at such an early time, but after doing some research, I adopted a technique that the navy uses to help the sailors fall asleep faster. Usually, I can fall asleep in 2-3 minutes if I want to, but oftentimes I stay up a bit thinking about the next day or something that had happened earlier that day. Pretty typical of me honestly to put off what I am doing to think a little (or a lot).
So that’s my day for better or for worse. I kinda went off on a tangent halfway through there talking about my calendar. But like I said, it is hard to talk about my day because each one is very different. So that was my way of giving a general approach to how I do things. I hope you learned something (although most of that was common sense). But anyway, I hope you can feel a little bit better about how interesting your days are now that you know how boring my days are. Chow for now!
Hello, World 