Monday, 10 September 2012

Life Drawing

I go life drawing on Monday and Thursdays, I draw for two hours before college or work everyday as well. I'm not joking when I say that I grabbing the bull by the horns and giving it all I got.



Saturday, 8 September 2012

Time Management Part 2

Im going to share some of the methods that I use to get my shit together. Sorry for the poor quality images, its late at home and therefore dark, but they serve their purpose in illustrating my examples.

By my door I have a calendar which has up coming events from day to day. I also have my to do lists, one for the week and one for the day. They way I learnt to do lists was from Randy Pausch. You divide the page in four quadrants, going across the page you have on the left what is urgent and on the right what is not urgent. Then going down the page you have you have importance, what is important up at the top of the page and what is less important at the bottom. You then proceed to work from top left to top right to bottom left to bottom right. You shouldn't be making to do lists as a single column working through tasks in the order you write them down.


I also have a white board to plan out tasks or projects that I am doing, currently at college I have the first assignment, bellow on the board I have written down each unit and the tasks that I have to complete for each. This is to just help me visualise and get my head round the task at hand.


Below is the timetable that I painstakingly put together. It is the default plan of each hour that I am awake while I am at this period of my life attending college. Unless I have something special, like planned time off, University visits or something more important that has priority, I know what I should be doing. Do I follow it to the line. No, its more there for guidance and I don't beat myself up too much for procrastinating. I have started something else now that is starting to minimise wasted time, but I will go more into that on a later post. The main thing I find is that you start the day as you mean to go on.


Love Jack.

Friday, 7 September 2012

Time Management

If you are cursed with inspiration like me then the chances are you are of a creative mindset. I'm no expert in psychology, but I know myself, and I reckon the chances are if you are imaginative it comes from a more sporadic thought process. This allows us to conjure up magic and create what didn't exist. For me this comes at a price, as my natural tendency is the latter I struggle when it comes to apply myself constructively, so I am having to learn it.

Thats right, I am disciplining myself to have a work-ethic, to manage myself, to plan for days, weeks and months so as to make what is in my head a reality. It has taken me about 6 months get me at the level I am at now and I am only just become competent in my organisation skills.





This is how I first began to make changes in my life regarding managing myself and workload. Randy Pausch was diagnosed with cancer and he used the remainder of his time on earth teaching people how to make every second count, that through hard work and discipline you can achieve your dreams. This was how I learned the skills to manage myself effectively.




This is how I got the motivation or how I made the emotional connection to why these small menial tasks are imperative to my goal. RSD and the whole self development side of the pick up community really speaks to me, in the this video Owen talks about that failure in small tasks leads to failure in your overall goals.




This leads to "macro momentum" as explained in this video. It takes about 30 days to wire your brain in making a new set of habits the norm.

By surrounding myself with positive influences and making every part of my day related my aspirations,  I immerse myself into a reality where my dreams are attainable.

I know this is extreme, I know this is hardcore but if you are resonating with anything I just said, then keep coming back to this blog so I can keep sharing with you my influences and the changes I'm making in my life.

Love Jack.

Monday, 3 September 2012

Streamlining

As you can see I have many goals and Im sure as life goes on I will have many more, so the question is where to start? As human beings we can only concentrate on so much at anyone time.

My first goal that I am looking to achieve is writing and illustrating my own book. I have many books I want to write as well as a couple of ideas for graphic novels, but at the moment their is one particular story that I am being compelled too. This means my main focus in life is this particular goal, everything I do is related to achieve this goal, I have dropped my hours at work to part time and as of Tuesday I am attending Epping Forest College to study for a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design with the intention of going to uni to study illustration. I now go to life drawing classes twice a week and intend to read and write poetry for 4 hours a day (in relation to Coleridge's advice in Biographia Literaria *cheeky wink*).

It is also important to do other stuff as well, have down time, socialise and pursuing other interests. I would say though that make sure this doesn't encroach on the time you set aside for your goals. Work hard, play hard, making sure your play is exciting and adventurous as possible.

Saturday night I went to a friends flat warming, it was one hell of a night with music, dancing, beer pong, people puking and pissing up living room walls. I went out to Bunga Bunga in Battersea with some of the party guests. Queuing up, one of my best friends was hooking up with these two girls, we were then greeted by another mate walking out the club saying it was shit.  After dancing and taking to randoms for two hours, I then proceeded to walk around Clapham with two of my other mates that were high on this MDMA that looked like it had been cut with Bisto, we got back to the flat to be greeted by paramedics who were attending to someone who had lacerated their arm on a wine bottle.

I would like to mention that I am Teetotal, remembering all the chaos and anarchy made the whole night seem more dreamlike and even more wonderful. I went and stayed at someone else's house in Tooting so as to not sleep in a puke, piss and blood ridden apartment. I didn't end up getting to sleep until 5:30 am before being woken by a phone call. It was my friend who was cracking on with them two girls in the queue, he just came back from having a threesome, climbed over the 10 ft high wall of the flat in Clapham and was stuck in the courtyard unable to get in. Life is infinitely more stranger than fiction.

So I suppose what Im getting at is don't work hard all the time, just make sure your spending your free time getting up to crazy shit.

Its now monday morning, I didn't finish work till 11:15 last night, working nine hours straight on only 4 hours sleep. This is fucking living.

Love Jack.


Saturday, 1 September 2012

Life Goals

If you are naturally as scatterbrained as me, unable to concentrate for long periods of time (let alone able to pursue and achieve your life goals), you might want some help. I suppose if a by-product of this Blog is that you end up thinking "If this guy who isn't half as talented as me can do it what the hell is stopping me?" then that would be something nice that I can be proud of.

This blog is first and foremost for me, under the reasoning that I would like strangers feedback and possible support. But in the back of my mind I imagine in the future after I have achieved some success in the fields that I'm pursuing, that people Google my name and stumble on this blog, discovering my failings, my triumphs and the amount of time and hard work to achieving things that are worth while.

So what are my life goals?




I will be posting my progress and what it takes to live a life worth living. This my seem melodramatic but I don't know how many people realise that this is the only life we have.

Love Jack.

Friday, 31 August 2012

The Necessity Of Actions

About an hour ago I was screwing about creating a new blog or not. The conclusion I came to was NO. Let me go through my reasonings for this.

1. I dont want to have to establish a new Blog, lay down the foundations of what is about and why I'm doing it etc.

2. It serves no function, it is just me thinking I am making good use of time when it isn't. I have a perfectly fine blog here.

3. This blog has got history, it shows that I am human. On display are all my mistakes, my boasts, my petty little insights of what I felt true of the world. I'd like to show people what actually takes place when you undergo massive change. It gives a true representation of my journey and not some bullshit that I have edited and changed to make me look good or cool. That is superficial and doesn't serve anyone.

4. Blogger had undergone some really good changes, and I get on with it better than Wordpress or Tumblr.

All in all a good logical decision. Let this post stand as a reminder if I begin to think like that again.

Love Jack.