Her 3 tips for balancing her life:

• #1: Work comes first
• #2: Set a daily schedule
• #3: Draw a line

Like her, I too work in public relations with some focus on online media, albeit in-house. I think I do #1 and #3 fairly well. Work will always be first, and I draw a line between my roles as a blogger, a PR person and a friend.

But #2 is something I constantly struggle with. (See my sparse blog archive for proof). Since most of my work is project-based, there are times where I will work on 3-5 projects simultaneously. Most of the time, this means I will end up burning weekends. And then there are times where I will have nothing substantial to do. (Although, I have yet to see this in 2009).

This is how my work day looks like during a moderately busy period.

9:00am Arrive at the office. Open Outlook. Reply to the gazillion emails before my meeting.

9.30am Rush to meeting.

12:30pm Come out of meeting. Check Twitter and Outlook. Update my to-do list. If there are very urgent emails or stuff, skip lunch with colleagues and work. If not, have quick lunch with colleagues.

1.30pm Resume work or respond to more emails.

2:00pm Rush to another meeting.

4:00pm Break. Either go downstairs to pick up a drink, or play something mindless like Restaurant City for 5 minutes.

4:30pm While clearing work, get interrupted by a stakeholder. Do urgent job for them.

5:30pm Resume normal work and respond to emails.

7:00pm Finish up the most urgent stuff. Review to-do list for the next day. If there are still more urgent things to do, stay past 7.

7:30pm Order take out or eat with colleague who stayed late too.

8:45pm Arrive home. Log on to Adium (Mac’s IM client) and Mixero (Twitter app). Chat with friends, reply any DMs or @replies. Check personal email, nanyate.com and Facebook. If it requires urgent response, reply.

9:00pm If there is some juice left in the brain, open Google Reader, TED.com or read a book. Get inspired to update my Delicious and/or Tumblr. Otherwise, play the guitar or vegetate with anime.

9:30pm Hang out with mom for a bit because moms need TLC. Make her watch Maru or CuteOverload with me.

11:30pm Wait for the boyfriend to wake up (since he’s on the other side of the world) Chat on MSN, Skype or on the phone.

12:00am Sleep.

Looking at her, I know I have lots more to learn – not just about the world of social media, but also about time management and life in general. Expertise and the realm of rockstarhood seem to come with some level of sacrifice. She sleeps less for one, and almost dedicates her whole day to social media and work, while mine is still peppered with other interests and quite a bit of downtime.

I’ve also only been working for one year, so there’s no way I can be on par yet. But I guess it’s time to step up my A-game. Ashita mo ganbaro! Thanks Pat, for the inspiration!

Dear readers, what is your work schedule like? How do you juggle your different roles and responsibilities? Any tips to share?

Related posts:

1. New Job, New Life

I recently reconnected with him via MSN and Facebook. It’s been 10 years since middle school. He’s now in Tokyo U’s grad school, still plays badminton, but more amazingly – he now plays the saxophone in an indie jazz band called Informel 8.

Last night he sent me some tracks from his band, and I was totally blown away. Informel 8 has the sophistication of Wayne Shorter (who is my favorite jazz musician, along with Joe Pass) and the mellowness of Johnny Hodges.

For jazz lovers, go listen to some tracks at Informel 8′s MySpace. I’ve added the tracklisting in French and English for those who don’t read Japanese.

• 薔薇の男 – L’homme de la Rose – Man of the Rose
• 空間の鳥 – L’oiseau dans l’espace – Bird in Space
• 人形使い – Un Marionnettiste – A Puppeteer
• 香しき夜 – La Nuit Aromatique – An Aromatic Night
• 天使の秩序 – L’ordre Angelique – Angel’s Order (my favorite track!)
• 水に浮かんだ家 – La Maison Flottante – Floating House
• The Sleep of Paul Delveux
• 美しき女庭師 – Beautiful Female Gardener

As an aside, my friend was telling me his band is named by a famous Japanese jazz / funk musician, Naruyoshi Kikuchi, who I think plays the saxophone with the sexiness of a rockstar. But I shall write about Naruyoshi Kikuchi some other time.

Back to my friend, I’m really happy to hear that he has achieved his childhood goals and is pursuing a larger goal again. It’s nice to see that hardwork, dedication and some talent pay off. Life suddenly seems more meaningful and colorful after a brief glance at his.

So I guess, even 10 years later, he is still an inspiration to me.

Dear readers, do you have anyone you admire or are inspired by? Do you like jazz? If you do, what do you think of Informel 8?

Related posts:

1. Maru the Japanese Cat
2. Okonomiyaki: Japanese Pancake

People who know me in person, have read my blog long enough or have browsed through my Last.FM will probably notice this about me: I absolutely hate rock music. Aside from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, I have no other rock song on my iTunes playlist of 3,000 songs…

…that is, until yesterday.

While I was watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood last night, the opening song captured my ears – or rather my heart. It’s called Again by YUI (ユイ). There’s so much soul in her music that I could forgive the perpetual annoyance of the electric guitar. Her childish yet calming voice pierces through the normally unforgivable guitars, as if striving to overcome all obstacles just to reach whatever she’s trying to reach. (My soul, in my case.)

So like any Gen-Y’er, I wikied YUIand was just so, so, so impressed. YUI also known as Yoshioka Yui (吉岡 唯) writes her own songs, plays the acoustic guitar, the electric guitar, the bass, the piano and even the drums! She could just be her own band – if only she could clone herself 4 times over. Coupled with her childhood struggles and her dramatic climb to fame, it’s really hard not to respect someone as talented and dedicated as her. (Of course, her childhood drama could all be a marketing ploy. But who cares, this girl’s got talent).

I shall stop gushing like a fan girl and just let you experience it yourselves.

Can’t wait to go home, pick up my guitar and start learning to play her songs! YUI <3!

Dear Readers, do you have any idols? Who and why do you like him/her?

Related posts:

1. Girl with a Guitar
2. My Cover of アイシテル Aishiteru

I recently came across a popular site called idlethink.com maintained by someone called Rachel. It is a quaint site with little content, simple design, but the style of writing is simply breathtaking. She combines succinct language, strategic use of grammar and powerful adjectives to paint a rhetorical picture of her topics. Simply put, she has mastered the English language to the point where every word and punctuation used has a purpose – including the adverbials and adjectives! Here is one of her blog entries:

in Paris, condemned to what is certainly the most disagreeable keyboard layout in the world. It is not only that the keyboard letters are incommodiously arranged so as to render the most common words into gibberish — the Q is where the A is; the Z is where the W; in place of the M is a comma, etc. There is also an unwholesome preoccupation with the shift key, to the extent that the entire number row at the top of the keyboard is swapped around with a random array of punctuation and symbols, so that one no longer presses ‘Shift+3′ to get the dollar sign, but must press ‘Shift+”‘ to get 3. The semicolon, comma and exclamation mark are easier to get to than the fullstop, which probably says something about French sentences. Typing has been, for the last fifteen minutes, a painstaking ordeal — so tiresome, in fact, that I si,ply refuse to pqnder to tis zhi,s q ,o,ent longer; qnd shqll noz touchtype zith unflinching belligerence: ?erry Christ,qs to qll1

Amazing, isn’t it? Let me try to analyze your amazement.

The first sentence is an incomplete sentence because it lacks a subject. It was no accident. I’m pretty sure she realized that it is an incomplete sentence because she doesn’t start it with a capital letter. To those who are less attentive, they would immediately ask “what is she talking about?”; to those who are sharper, the incomplete sentence will leave them wanting for more. To both audiences, the incomplete sentence thus serves as a very powerful introduction.

—

I’ve come across countless writers throughout my very short lifetime; some annoy me to no end with over-flowery gibberish, repetitive language, etc – all of which serve no purpose and give no consideration to the reader. Now, I was never a good writer. My essays in high school and the early years of university rarely received a grade higher than a B. I always thought that it was because my content wasn’t good enough. But that’s not it. After taking a few rhetoric courses, I realized that I always used to write with the mentality of simply regurgitating information with no regard to how it’s put. But now, I’ve realized that…

…we write because we want to be read; yet to be read we must not only write, but write well.

So, just as I worship a higher Power to become one step closer to becoming like him, I will ‘worship’ idlethink.com to become one step closer to writing like her.

No related posts.