It’s now Saturday, and I’m hit with two conflicting thoughts.

The first is:

It’s the weekend, so now I can work on my side projects!

This is appealing because I have all today and tomorrow in which to make progress toward my goals of software, writing, or drawing. I don’t have this much free time available during the week, so it makes sense to capitalize on it.

The second thought is:

It’s the weekend, so now I can watch a TV show, take a nap, hang out with friends, or read!

This is appealing because I’ve worked throughout the week, and now is the perfect time to do something away from the computer. It’s important to recharge to avoid burnout.

I say they’re conflicting thoughts because one involves working on projects, and the other means taking a break from projects.

What to Do?

But, when framed this way, these thoughts lead me to believe I’ll either spend the entire day doing one thing, or the other.

Realistically, I should be able to do a bit of both. On a weekend day, where I’m setting the schedule, there is enough time to write for a while, watch some Netflix, and then also hang out with friends.

It’s one thing to realize there’s a chance for balance, but it’s another thing entirely to know and feel it.

It’s curious I think this way, and I’m not entirely sure why I do. I believe my father has this tendency, so maybe it rubbed off? That, or time during week nights is in limited supply, so it usually is one thing or the other. And since there are more week nights than weekend days, the one-or-the-other mentality is my normal one, which carries over to the weekend, even when it isn’t applicable.

Deciding

What can easily happen, though, is that I waffle over what I should do. Do I work on everything-wordpress to add image uploading, or a blog post like this, or the Fourth Mechanism (part of the Mechanism Collection), or another story that’s brewing in my mind, or my one minute timer application, or something else entirely?

It’s difficult to settle on one idea when there are so many competing for attention, and each are worthwhile.

So what, then? I’ll probably just piddle my time away on distractions, or flit between multiple things, without actually focusing very well on anything

Break It Up

Perhaps this really means I’m not good at segmenting my time? I don’t regularly give myself 1 hour for this, 2 hours for that, 30 minutes for the other. But on the weekend, should I really even have that mindset? Especially if it’s leisure time?

If I really want to get multiple things done, I suppose some amount of managing time in the day is still necessary.

Just Pick Something Already

Today, I took the approach of doing what struck my fancy. I read while walking on the treadmill for an hour, and then I wrote (part of which turned into this post), and then I worked on some code.

There are other ways to decide what to do, but a reliable method is to just go with the flow and do what interests you in the moment.