time management question

From a reader:

“It is clear from your many web postings that you are capable of steady production (of ideas, arguments, and books–in considerable number) and so, it seems, administrative chores. You must be capable of considerable discipline and focus. (And relatively little sleep?!)”

This one will go in the bundle of advice posts, in case any of this gives someone good ideas. The old principle of “many ways to skin a cat” should always be remembered; different formulae will work for different people.

I sleep 5-6 hours on weeknights, with a couple of catnaps in the office each day (painfully harder at the new campus, since my nice old campus couch was not allowed to make the move with me; now I just have to nap with my head down on the table while sitting in the chair). I catch up on sleep on the weekends. It’s also possible to sleep on the long bus rides to and from campus, though usually I’ll run into someone I know or an interesting stranger (such as yesterday morning) and that will make sleep either impossible or unappealing.

My surplus work time probably comes from these factors:

*no television. I have no moralizing objections to television, but have essentially zero interest in watching anything on TV other than key sporting events. And living in Egypt means that most of the key sporting events that interest me (those held in the USA) take place at 3 or 4 A.M., which gives me a good excuse not to watch any of them.

*low level of casual socializing. I like my socializing to be intense interactions within a small circle. Just going and hanging out with fringe acquaintances over light chatter for 3 hours is perfectly respectable and nice, but just doesn’t interest me much, and with age I’m finding it more and more important to do the things you want to do and not do the things you don’t want to do (other than genuine duties, of course).

This is actually a bit odd, because since moving to Egypt everyone has been calling me things like “classic extrovert,” “friendliest and most outgoing person they ever met,” etc., though I still see myself as a brooding lone wolf. These sorts of disconnects are always interesting puzzles, and I haven’t figured that one out yet. Especially odd is that the population of Egyptian students, possibly the most outgoing population group I have ever encountered on earth, ask me things like “how can you know so many people?” But it doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like I hang out with just a handful.

*eating out a lot. Cooking takes time; I live alone; it’s boring to cook for yourself; it saves time to eat out.

Another thing is an important acquired skill… the ability to put things in words quickly, so that thoughts are put into action immediately as needed. In my student years I was a bit tongue-tied, nervous about speaking in class, and to this day I read with sympathy of the struggles of Hegel and Bohr to formulate their thoughts in intelligible public sentences, because that’s sort of where I was at age 19 or so.