How To Achieve Personal Development: Have A Schedule.

Hello, and welcome to the Uvelopin blog. The focus for today is how you can achieve personal development by having a schedule, or filling up your calendar. It is important to fill up your daily calendar, and here's why: having idle hours or days means leaving a hole for just about anything to fill up. And something most certainly will; it may even be something stupid, or unwanted, or undoing in your life. The simple saying, "an idle man is a devil's workshop", is more true than you may think. Recall those times or days you had nothing to do? How did it make you feel? Restless, anxious, bewildered...? Then, some stupid idea came to your head, and you decided it was better to execute that stupid idea than be idle. Not your fault, but your fault. Not your fault, because the mind is not wired by nature to be idle or stationary (as the body is). Think of it this way..., your mind is still active, and busy, and dynamic even when you are asleep, or your when body is in some sort of rest state. Heck! Your mind is still running all over the place when you are trying to focus on something important (happens to me sometimes..., or maybe a lot, don't know about you). And you know what, sometimes, it seems that when the mind notices that the body is idle a lot of the time, it finds a way to set it to work; and the work is mainly a task to manifest what it has been brewing or designing within you for so long. Have you noticed this?
You would be lucky if your mind is predisposed to thinking creative stuff, rather than destructive stuff. I found in my earlier years (teens to early 20s) that my mind was predisposed to thinking destructive stuff. Mostly self-destructive stuff. I wont say I had an easy childhood, emotionally and psychologically. Physically, it was ok though, because my parents provided all I needed to survive and grow (shelter, food, medicine, education, etc); but like I said, emotionally and psychologically, I was unstable most of the time. I can't really get into all the reasons behind my childhood and early adulthood instability here and now (maybe sometime in the future, in another blog), but it had a lot to do with my environment, family... hormones... age... school... awareness... (I don't know). I always felt misunderstood; my mind was always so active and busy with all sorts of stuff (including grownup stuff); I had an attention deficit issue (which affected me a lot in school); I had a learning disorder and found myself to be really slow in grasping things as presented in books and in traditional means in school.... The people I had around me (mostly family) couldn't (or didn't want to) understand this and so I found myself a lot at the other end of a whip or toxic remark, and this led me to recede a lot in to myself (with my busy mind brewing self-destructive thoughts by the second). My life really changed though (including my mental patterns) in my early 20s, and more or less went up hill from there (see story in How To Achieve Personal Development: Resource Management), and valuing my emotional and psychological state more made me value my life more. I would constantly try to block out toxic thoughts and traumatic memories by engaging in something... ANYTHING.  Chasing boys, waiting to be controlled by my family and environment, and placing my attention on what others wanted or felt, did not secure my mental and emotional well-being, so... What did I do..? I filled up my daily calendar with what I wanted to be there.
This, so far, maybe all over the place to some of you, so, I'll have us look at it from another angle. it's not enough to have a calendar, nor is it enough to have it filled up. The point I'm trying to drill in here is that you have a calendar and fill it up "yourself". The point in doing it yourself (and not allowing life or other people to fill it up for you) keeps your mind at peace, assured that you are (or it is) still in control of your life. The thing is, when you feel you have no control, your mind throws a fit (tantrum), and this promotes rebellion. The ugly thing about this state is that, your mind will deceive you into thinking that this rebellion is a creative way to have your way (which you never really had figured out, and which is why someone else had to figure it out for you). However, in truth, the rebellion destroys you in most cases. Acting out proves nothing but childishness; however, a show of responsibility shows maturity. The mind's first impulse is to tend to the childish state of acting out, rather than the mature state of following-up given tasks responsibly.
If you have not created and filled up your calendar yourself, then you probably have someone else doing it for you. If you don't mind this state of living, it's ok, but if you do, then you may want to turn on the maturity and show your slave driver (LOL! Just kidding...) ... let's say your "calendar-filler", that you are responsible enough to follow up with the daily tasks given, and even have time left to do some other creative or responsible stuff (which "you" should think up on your own). For instance, if your parents fill your weekend calendar with house chores, rather than act out and choose to spend time with friends, turn up the maturity and come up with ways to do the house chores efficiently, so much so that it gives you ample time by the end of each day. And then... Rather than go spend the remaining time with friends, read a book, or develop some creative hobby which your parents can see affects you positively, and then take a few hours (1 or 2 hours) to nap. Don't forget your homework (if you have any)! In time, your calendar-filler (in this case, your parents) will trust you enough to stay responsible and give you more room to fill up your own calendar yourself. And guess what.... That sacrifice you repeatedly made by turning on the maturity (rather and the childishness) all those times, trained your mind to value maturity and responsibility over childishness and waste of resources (see How To Achieve Personal Development: Resource Management) and you become better able to come up with creative tasks to make a schedule out of. Self improving stuff.
Sense made?
Now, how to fill up your calendar, right? You may want to make 3 lists; one will be of things you "want" to do, the second will be of the things you "have" to do, and the the third will be of the things you are "expected" to do. The things you "want" to do are those things you would prefer to do all day if you had your way; the things you "have" to do are the things you know are necessary to be done, for your own good, and that of others.  The things you "have" to do are not to be confused with the things you are "expected" to do, because, the things you are "expected" to do are the things which you may not feel are necessary to be done (or done by you), but you know that all those who matter to you believe that those things are necessary to be done, and must be done by you (for some reason).
I hope you are following.
The three categories of things stated above can encompass whatever activity you choose for each of them to encompass, but don't pressure yourself into making sure you are putting the right activity under the right category. This whole thing is a process and it's not a one time thing. Your ability to distinguish and categorise better will increase with time, so for now, just go with your feelings. Group the activities according to how they make you feel in the moment. It is very important! The next thing you may want to do is cross off the activities from each category that seem to produce extreme emotions for you. What do I mean by extreme emotions? Anything you feel that, thinking of alone (at this point in time), sets you in an extreme of an emotion (example anything that makes you over-excited, too bored, very angry, etc). The point of this step is to help your new-found schedule last long enough to create a developing impact in your life. If you choose things that make you extremely happy, you will tend to allocate too many hours on your daily calendar to such activities, and this will upset all the other activities, and your environment in one way or the other; hence, your schedule won't last long before you need to reform it, or someone forcefully reforms it for you. Also, if you choose things that make you feel the extremes of negative emotions (such as boredom or anger, frustration) at this stage of creating your schedule, you will most likely rebel and abandoned the schedule before it can last long enough to grow on you. So stick with the activities you feel balanced about, and cross off the rest; for now!
Next step is to contemplate ways of carrying out these activities very efficiently so you can consume less time and energy and get the job done right as well. Do this for every single activity you have left in your list.
Now, create your timetable or schedule, allocating the times you expect that each activity could consume each day. You can even split some activities so that you don't have to do a full activity which could take you the whole day in one day, no matter how efficient you try to be. If you can't split some large time consuming activities that you know must be done, then find a suitable day and dedicate it to that activity. Take note that this schedule you are creating doesn't have to be a "daily" schedule; it could be weekly or monthly schedule; even yearly! This method I'm describing can work for any period or time interval.
Next step! Now, you are done with the un-crossed activities in your list, and they are successfully on your schedule, check to see if you have any time left each day, week or month. if you do, then review your crossed activities and cross off, again, those which make you feel the most extreme of emotions.
Now, choose from what's left on your reviewed list in a ratio of 2:1 (two activities that give you positive emotions, to 1 activity that gives you negative emotions) and add these activities to the vacant spots in your calendar. Try not to re-adjust the times you had already allocated to the first set of activities you put on the calendar.
These steps are designed to give you a long living schedule that you can adhere to for at least a month (in order to create and sustain the discipline), and also to keep you balanced emotionally and psychologically.
So... What do you think? Do you feel having a schedule is necessary for personal development? Does the method of creating a schedule seem feasible to you? Do you have a better method? Would you rather do nothing all day? Feel free to air your thoughts!
I love you. Till next week.