I've been working on cutting down wasted time recently, considering that now with the commute that I leave the home at 7:30 am and don't get home till past 8:30 pm, I have come to the realization that I have little time to myself. It is paramount that I make the best of it so I've been working on cutting down the number of distractions and time killers.
One of the best moves I've made is killing the habit of flipping on the computer immediately after getting home. I don't have a TV and have been living without one for the past 5 years without one and to take its place, the computer has become my media center. The problem is that the way I am spending time on the computer is just as bad as the way I used to spend on TV-- aimlessly doing nothing.
Instead of flipping on the computer to aimless browse at things, am becoming more stringent with my time allocation. First thing I do after getting home is either cook or exercise. I've also started making a new habit of not riding the train all the way home and getting off at 1 stop before I get home. Actually, it's a transfer stop and instead of spending time waiting for my transfer, I just hit the street and jog the rest of the 3 km home. I've managed to do the jog in about 15~16 mins and it's turning into a pretty good exercise routine.
Running this distance is actually quite significant when it comes to reducing body fat as I burn about 200 calories. One average meal for me is about 500~600 calories so I am burning off the equivalent of 33%~40% of a single meal. Assuming that I do this 3~4 times a week (ie when it doesn't rain) the reduction in the amount of calories the body absorbs is significant in addition to the health benefits of jogging.
I've also allocated about 1 hour almost every night to studying for the CFA exam (at a rate of about 20 pages/day) and have made this a prerequisite to turning on the computer. It's been about 3 years since the last course I took in university and it's rather refreshing to start studying again. One of the great things about reading study material is the much higher signal-to-noise ratio compared to reading articles on the net. The quality of information in books is far superior to what is published on the net. I've also noticed that as much as I like digitized information, I find that I like writing out my notes; there is simply a freedom in penning out notes that isn't available compared to typing out information (writing diagrams and sketching arrows is still ridiculously slow). Now that I think about it, if there was a great way to pen notes digitally and organize them, that would be awesome because I am one of those people that can easily generate volumes of notes.
I wonder if there are good note taking software where you could both type and use a stylus to sketch in other information. Like arrows, lines and even equations.
Once getting into a groove of "getting things done in rapid succession," I've found that a momentum kicks in. In the sense that I am far more likely to want to move on to the next item on my mind that needs to get done, without hesitation. Looking back at past behavior, the biggest hindrance to action is thinking about all the things that I ought to be doing and not knowing which of the things I should just simply do, because I have a tendency of worrying about "is the thing I am doing the right thing to be doing?" I've moved on to killing that by coming to the realization that time is scarce and doing something is better doing nothing. I've become far more effecting at using my time when getting at home, far more compare to when I was living closer to work and I find that ironic.
A change in environment is a good thing.
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