I am most relaxed early in the morning, when I wake up.
At that time, I believe I have all day to do all the things I ‘need’ to do that day, so I can lie back and let my thoughts float wherever they want.
But eventually, I come to the conclusion that I have to start doing things.
Then it’s one thing after another. Sometimes they are tasks imposed on my by other people (my job, for example), sometimes they are tasks imposed on me by biology (going to the bathroom), but much of my time is taken up by tasks I impose on myself.
I could simply choose to put less tasks on myself … yet there is SO MUCH I WANT TO DO!!!!! For example, keep this blog updated regularly every Friday. If I choose to discard some tasks, there are tasks that I would like to do which would take their place.
So then it comes to the evening. In the evening I have to weigh whether a) I can complete all my tasks b) if I can’t, which tasks should I do and c) when should I quit and just go to sleep. On many days, I can’t complete the tasks I had hoped to complete. Like today, I think it’s not going to happen, at least not without compromising my bedtime. And compromising my bedtime will make tomorrow very unpleasant.
However, I’ll be darned if I break my perfect record of having a blog post up every single Friday in 2012. And I don’t want to have to worry about writing a post tomorrow
morning. So I’m writing it right now, and scheduling it for tomorrow.
Actually, it’s impressive that I impose so many tasks on myself. I guess there is a lot I want to do in life … but do I really need to do these things with such impatience?
The Notes Which Do Not Fit 
Haha! I am the same. I have a daily list which is far too ambitious. It contains all of my daily tasks, and I usually end up failing to accomplish all of them, leaving two or three or four of them unstarted by the time the sun is down and I am ready to finish working.
There is lots of stuff to do in life, but there are two reasons why I think it is better to do them now. First, anything that benefits you over time (like a new skill that you can use for the rest of your life, or new knowledge) will benefit you more if you learn it earlier. If I learn Cantonese this year I will be able to use it for the rest of my life, but if I don’t learn Cantonese until I am 35, then I will have fewer years in which I can make use of that skill. The second thing is that I expect to have more responsibilities and less time as I get older. Maybe in 10 years I’ll be married, have a full-time (or possibly more!) job, something like a blog on the side, and a kid. That makes it seem like if I don’t do these things now, I won’t have time again until retirement!
This is actually one of the reasons I don’t plan to retire. I’d rather have more time now to do things I want to do and keep working for whole my life rather than delay everything until “after retirement” (plus, I might die before I retire anyway).
Are you learning Cantonese now? I think I’d like to learn Cantonese one day, but I have my hands are now full with Mandarin with some Hakka on the side (on the other hand, Hakka and Cantonese are supposed to be pretty close, and the Hakka I’ve learned has helped me understand random bits of Cantonese).
Not retiring is a definite possibility. I remember that Tim Ferris’s idea of taking multiple mini-retirements throughout a career struck me as very appealing when I first read his book. That is something I may attempt in the future, taking a year off here and there to pursue different projects.
No Cantonese for me now, that was a purely hypothetical example. I may get around to some Cantonese eventually, but that that would be fairly far off. I’m currently focusing on some non-language skills, but since Brazil is in my future Portuguese is my next project.