Transcending Ordinary

On my last full day in Bogota, my friends and I decided to conquer the Cerro De Monserrate. This was the mountain just behind the area we stayed in the La Candelaria district. There are three ways up the mountain, cable car, rail, or in foot. Jessica and I decided to hike it, while everyone else took the cable car. Besides my daily Salsa lessons I hardly had any excercise on the trip so I was eager to let loose on the hike. That was at the start anyway I soon realized just how much of a factor the high altitude can be. The base was 2600m and 3160m at the top. On the way up we passed many others coming down. I later realized most people take the cable car up, and walk down.
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The next day we decided to start early and take a trip north to the Salt Mines. We went to the metro terminal for a lift on the “Transmillenium.” At the last stop we got off and took the bus for another hour. We got off at a town called Zipaquira and made a 15minute walk up north before arriving at the Catedral De Sal.
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I was up late last night probably around 3am, but i was up by 8:30 and met friends for breakfast at 9:30. We went to a nice cafe for creeps. The food tasted great and you can’t beat Colombian coffee While eating, the store was surrounded by, military, bodyguards and police, along with a few hummers and law enforcement vehicles. Things looked pretty serious so we quickly made our way out. Upon walking through the city, we passed by the Presidential Palace and at the back, I noticed an ambulance standing ready. After all, we are in Colombia I guess I was reminded of this after passing through security.
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What a journey I had yesterday. First off, things started off early. Having turned in at 3am, I was up by 5am to leave my house at 5:15am. I deliberately went to sleep super late so I would be hella tired on the flight. My roommate had to be in Lorton, VA at 7am and DCA was on the way so he gave me a lift

Once at the airport I stopped for my traditional McD’s breakfast (when i fly out of DCA anyway).

While eating a delta person announced that my original flight (not departing for 2hrs) might be delayed due to mechanical problems.
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I had an epiphany yesterday.

My friends will tell you that I can be pretty serious about time management. I’m always trying to get a ton of things done with the short supply of time I have. Up until now, I always associated not getting everything done, with poor time management. Certainly multiple to-do lists and parallel goal lists with various time windows helped, but I still felt as though I couldn’t get everything done that I wanted.

Yesterday I realized that I’ll never get ‘everything’ that I want done. Before I thought it was fine because for the most part, I spent my time doing meaningful tasks rather then excessive time on things like tv, games, etc. However I used to do whatever ‘meaningful’ task was on my mind at the time. It wasn’t very systematic, but that seemed ok for me, at least I wasn’t wasting time.

I now realize a second dimension to my tasks. As I said, I’ll never have enough time to get ‘everything’ done. So, the question is one of priorities. All the tasks are productive, but which are more important then the others? I should be working on those tasks in order from top to bottom. It isn’t enough to just work on productive tasks; at the end of the day I’d rather the most important fall above the accomplished line rather than the random order they were in before.

I hope my insight can benefit others who “think” they have issues with time management

Ok, I don’t remember the last time I’ve actually bought non-rechargeable batteries. The capacities of rechargeable batteries these days is just about the same as the single use alkalines, not to mention sparing more landfill waste.

The other night I read about a black friday deal that Costco had on rechargeable batteries. I’ve got a ton of rechargeable batteries already, but this was a newer type. Sanyo calls them Eneloop. Still NiMH (the current type that replaced NiCa), but these apparently hold charge far better then the others. According to them, they lose only 15% after a year vs a normal NiHM battery losing most of it’s charge in 6 months. Here’s a great article on these Eneloop batteries.
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