Week 14 - Scheduling

I've been pretty busy this week. Not with anything important, but I suppose Mahjong is also not important in the grand scheme of things.

I likely have to carve out some specific time for Mahjong now that I have more desires. I, like most people, am pretty bad at balancing things out when left to my own devices.

Scheduling is a question of "or" rather than a question of "and." There's not enough time to do all the things you want to do. I can't study mahjong AND study Japanese AND go for the fusion event in RAID AND work on improving my makeup skills AND write yuri AND play OSRS AND keep up with manga.

Normally for prioritization, people use an "Eisenhower Matrix," which sorts the tasks based on how urgent they are, and how important they are. But, I basically don't have urgent tasks. Importance could be how much I enjoy them.

On a 9-5 workday, I have about 5-6 hours of time. Roughly an hour in the morning, and then roughly four or five hours after supper. How much time do these tasks take up?

• Mahjong - 30 minutes for a Tenhou game with review, 45+ for a Mahjong Soul game. Enjoyment fluctuates, and it's not important.
• Japanese - I can review flashcards during the commute, so kind of zero time to maintain on days when I go into the office. 15-30 minutes otherwise. Enjoyment is low, I hate flashcards, but it's medium importance.
• RAID - 2 hours in the busiest times, 30 minutes on the low end. Grim Forest just reset, and there's a fusion event going on, so it's at the high end right now. Enjoyment is high, and it's not important at all.
• Makeup - On a normal day, 15-30 minutes, including skin care. Expands when I want to try to learn new things. Enjoyment is usually low, but importance is high.
• Writing - Could take up infinite time. Enjoyment is high, importance is low.
• OSRS - Could take up infinite time. Enjoyment is currently high, importance is nonexistent.

On top of the things I want to do, there are things I should or must do.

• Exercise - The AHA recommends 75 minutes of vigorous cardio a week, so five fifteen minute sessions, and two days of muscle-strengthening. Enjoyment is low, importance is high.
• Voice Building - Due to the COVID isolation and my quiet nature, I ended up becoming a "vocal underdoer," and should be doing 2-3 fifteen minute sessions a day to build up my vocal cords again. Enjoyment is negative, importance is medium. This one could be argued to be urgent, and is the only one that will end.
• Showering, feeding the animals, eating, etc...

Okay, let's build a schedule and see how I can fit in Mahjong. Let's start from the things that must happen at certain times. RAID's daily reset is at 8pm my time, and playing at that time is important during CvC events. Skincare must happen in the mornings and at night, with makeup also in the morning if I'm going out. I'm also a morning shower person, as my long hair takes forever to dry. The geckos get fed at 7:30 PM every other day.

With all that, I'm left with 30 minutes in the morning. Fitting in voice building there is what I should do. I can do my RAID chores during breakfast, as they're mostly auto at that part of the day (Clan Boss and such). My Japanese flashcards can overlap with lunch on the days I don't go into work.

Okay, how's the schedule looking now?

Really getting packed on weekdays. And before we can even get to the fun stuff, I've gotta fit in some exercise and another voice building session. The other voice building session might as well go by the gecko feeding, since there's a small gap there and it doesn't take long. WebMD tells me that it's better to exercise before eating, so let's slip that one in before supper.

Meditation should come before the nightly skin care, to give me some time to wind down before bed. I guess I can push those up too. The skin care won't take the full 30 minutes, so brushing my teeth and other pre-bed preparations can fit in that block. That frees up an hour-long block.

Mahjong is best to play while Japanese people are awake. There's a 12 hour time difference between me and Japan, so that means either the morning on the night. Mahjong gets fit into that new hour-long block. Except on Fridays, where there's the blog post, and Thursdays, which I chose as my day off of Mahjong. The extra slot can go to learning new makeup stuff, which is also something that should happen at night in case I mess up.

Now I just need to stuff the writing and OSRS into the weekends and it's done:

The completionist in me wants to fill all the rest of the empty space. But, it's not really necessary, and there's more empty space than there seems. A fifteen minute task takes up half an hour on the calendar, to account for things going wrong and time taken to start and stop the task, so I'll have plenty of little pockets of time here and there.

This will end up being about 10-12 games a week, so the 1000 game goal isn't very realistic with this schedule. Let's just lower that down to 500.

Okay, new schedule created. Let's see if I can stick to that starting tomorrow.

To talk about Mahjong at least a little bit, I'm starting to synchronize with the snakes:

Hopefully I can use that ability for good some day.