It's amazing how the day fills up (Will in About A Boy)

Picasso painted 50,000 works of art in his lifetime.

 

This is a kind of ramshackle sequel to the previous post:

The ideas around dividing your day into meaningful segments appeals to me.

Will in About A Boy divides his day into units of time - each unit is 30 minutes.

Gretchen Rubin has this on rebounding from a mistake: “Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, “I'll get back on track tomorrow,” try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.” 

Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA) advocates small units: “You can do so much in ten minutes’ time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”

What's good for Ingvar seems unworkable for Wozza's world. Ten minute slots??? Far too small. I'll stick to About A Boy I think.

Using Will's units of time as a guide, my Monday to Friday 11 hour school day is divided up into 22 units (3 units before school starts then 12 units of teaching/ learning time, plus 1 unit for morning tea and 2 units for lunch. After school there are another 4 units before heading home).

I like this concept - it allows me to use both Ingvar's no waste, and Gretchen's fail small ideas as well. Yes - 30 minute units is the way to go!

BTW: Picasso apparently worked each day from 2pm until 10pm - a solid 8 hours (16 units) hence his amazing productivity.

Incidentally, I had to get a blood test this week so I went to a local place, took a number, and waited my turn. It took 2 units (apparently I could have booked online and arrived at an appointed time, but, luckily, yes - luckily, I didn't know that). So I spent the time reading and then deleting stuff on my phone. I managed a complete catch up (and unsubscribed from The Literary Hub for good measure - mixed feelings but glad that I made a decision).

Who knows what's good or bad right?