Actually, there wasn’t much execution. The most important part of the plan was the dedicated study time, which was used for other things. Each day last week just dwindled down mysteriously and nothing was really accomplished.

Yesterday was the first day of a new work week and would have been a good time to start but things turned out otherwise. There was a flood of unread feed items which took up the blunt of the day.

To be frank, I’d blame laziness and lack of inspiration for this plus a touch of ADD. Scratch that, this ADD is actually quite bad already.

Today was a bit better though.

As planned, necessary tasks (refer to point one on Managing The Workflow) were pretty much done by 3 in the afternoon at which point it was time for some dedicated time. Since I knew what I was supposed to study now, I was able to try and do just this but the distractions were still present. It was still too easy to ALT+TAB to Plurk and check it out from time to time.

Due to the distractions though, the 80 minute module spilled over for an hour after my lunch break.

Still, I was able to finish the module I was studying which was pretty good. Just don’t ask me what I learned and if I retained it properly.

Overall, I’d say it is a good start with small baby steps. We seriously need to focus on studying though and not to let distractions win. The plan is sound and we simply need a better effort in implementing it.

Time has been spent mindlessly checking social networks, RSS feeds, checking email, and playing games on the PS3.

Also, there’s only so many tricks you can learn and master on the scooter before getting bored. One cannot be too crazy with the tricks as there are cameras all over the place and we wouldn’t want to see ourselves on Today’s Big Fail for a scooter trick gone horribly wrong.

With this in mind, I have taken it upon myself to divide the work hours into something that would be more productive and organized. We cannot carry on any longer simply wasting the hours of the day away. We have at least 3 months of this left.

Besides, it would at the very least show that I am actually doing something than just sitting around all day.

Here’s what I have devised so far.

• 1320-1500 — Check all email accounts starting with work, Plurk, unread RSS feed items, social networking sites (Quizbook) and play Zork. Seems like a lot, but I’ve checked and can normally get through all of them by 1500.
• 1500-1700 — Study time for career advancement. Seriously, I’ve been extremely lazy and uninspired so allotting time in the day for this should help.
• 1700-1800 — Lunch break which includes trips to ASDA or Subway for food. This involves a little plurking, emails and RSS feeds. Yes, even during lunch break, I’m in front of a PC.
• 1800-2000 — Play with Slicehost server, WordPress site (themes, plugins, layout) and think of something to blog.
• 2000-2120 — Check back plurk, RSS feeds and emails until 3rd shift comes in.

Sounds like a solid plan, right?

Now for the tricky part, sticking to it and avoiding distractions as it is so easy to Alt+Tab to a new window and Ctrl+# to another opened tab.

With this said, this would not hinder anything which needs to be done that is work related like tickets, tasks and server builds. We are of course, fanatical.

Anyway, let’s see how it goes. I’ll start tomorrow.

Considering the price and the freedom, I decided to go ahead and dive in as our workload these days is pretty much none. This would give me something to play with aside from the PS3 whilst at work. At the same time, this would teach me a few more things about Ubuntu (the Linux distro I choose), managing an actual web server and hosting a website, things I learnt back in school but never put into actual practice.

With all the guides available, setting up a website running of wordpress was pretty easy and I guess it is about time to share it to the world.

I’ve been maintaining blogs on Livejournal (since January 2004), WordPress.com (since August 2007), and Multiply for quite sometime now, however, they all have exactly the same content. I doubt I would be killing anyone one of them off as I did with my Geocities website which started back in April 2003.

Speaking of Geocities and it’s coming demise, another thing I could do is migrate the old site over, just so I can preserve it online.

Going back to this new site, I doubt it would host any new content as well as anything drastically different from my other blogs. I don’t really have a passion for one exclusive thing nor a niche in some kind of field.

Hence sticking to the blog title, Perfecting Loneliness, which again is one of my favorite Jets To Brazil songs.

With that said, I am hoping to post more creative entries as well as post with more regularity as I have been completely lazy these days. One thing though, extremely emotional content will stay in Livejournal as it was designed for.

So, add me up on your RSS reader. You do have one, right?