Time Management

If there's one thing you learn from five years of boarding school, it's how to balance your time. Whether or not you intend to learn that skill, it's unavoidable because of the extreme amount of structure, especially in the first few years. From about ages twelve to fourteen I had approximately two hours of study hall per night and during my free periods I sat in a mandatory study hall where proctors quickly curbed my attempts to sneak in episodes of my favorite television shows and failed to foster the fad addictions to various online video games.

When people try to get me to explain how I manage to find the time to do all my homework and get to bed before eleven, while seeming like I've done nothing all day I am often lost for words. (Note: This might be a result of social awkwardness) It's not something I can explain easily. Some of my answers are along the lines of, "I just do it." or "I just like to get stuff out of the way." But this isn't necessarily true. The need to be efficient has been inculcated into my life to the point where it has become routine. Like brushing your teeth before bed or taking a daily shower, time management is a habit I cannot live without.

There is an internet meme referring to time management that is unsurprisingly relatable to the problem of time management.

I've always loved this comic; to quote a great cliché "it's funny because it's true". It's easy to believe that you can have all three and be happy, but everyone knows that's it's nearly impossible to strike the perfect balance.

I'm at a strange place right now where I feel like I have manage to strike this balance. This may be pompous to even admit considering my previous sentence saying it was "nearly impossible" to strike such a balance. The only reason I think I am able to accomplish this goal of balance is because I have changed the way I view the three vertices of the triangle. 

Of course, good grades represent the non-negotiable vertex. My standards of good grades remain roughly the same. I'm not going to all of a sudden accept a 75 as a "good grade" just to feel like my time management training at Groton was worth something. "Enough Sleep" is more variable to me. If I get to bed at 12:30 each night and wake up at 6:30, I find that a reasonable amount of sleep for me to function on. I'm awarded bonus time management points if I can go to bed earlier than that, or if I can afford to wake up a little later. 

As you could probably tell due to my aforementioned note about my social incompetence, maintaining a social life is something I find a bit more difficult. Of course, being essentially socially inept makes my standards of a social life a bit lower than everyone else's. I don't need to constantly be talking (read:screaming) with a group of girls or "hanging out" to feel like I've been social. A long dinner or doing homework in a room filled with other people is often enough  to satisfy that particular vertex for me. 

For me, lowering the standards of a "social life" and "enough sleep" are enough to let me feel like I'm leading a balanced life. For everyone else's quest to become better at time management there are two options: (1) Accept that you can only have two of the vertices of this triangle and find contentedness in having only two or (2) lower your standards of one or more of the vertices so you can be content with having all three no matter how much someone else might see your life as unbalanced.