Importance of Blocking Time in Schedule

This morning I had a number of work-related meetings and then had to take my wife to the doctor's. She had one of those screenings where they knocked her out and she needed a driver to take her there and bring her home. Furthermore I was not allowed to leave the campus until the procedure completed and my wife awake enough to go home. Being required to stay at the doctor's office for 2 hours, I asked the admitting attendant if they had a soft-serve ice cream machine since I couldn't go anywhere. They did not but she said she would mention it to the doctors. I doubt anything will change but if US prisoners are required to be able to watch television, doctor's offices should provide soft-served ice cream when you have to wait more than an hour.

Fortunately the office did have WiFi to use for those of us waiting. I made sure to log onto the system and get some work done. Should anyone need to reach me, I made an entry in my public-work calendar that I could be reached for anything except meetings. That worked well as I had one fellow colleague reach out for clarification on some of the data I am very familiar with. I provided an answer and continued to work on other things.

Whenever I go to schedule a meeting with fellow work associates, I always check everyone's calendar to make sure I am not scheduling over their activities. My hope is that others do the same with me and they almost always do. There are some occasions when a meeting will have quite a few participants and the scheduler must pick a time that will work for the majority of the attendees. If possible, those that can move things to attend will.

After getting home from the doctor's office today, I looked at the next several weeks and scheduled my morning exercise. I am fairly flexible right now and don't need to exercise at specific times. However when I see my schedule filling up, I block time in my schedule to keep people from taking the only time slots in my day where I can exercise. While some treat daily workouts as optional, I don't; probably because of my love of soft-serve ice cream. My health is important enough to me that I do all I can to stay as healthy as possible. I also blocked off time tomorrow evening to spend time with my wife. That is the description I used: "Time with Wife." Most people wouldn't dare try to schedule anything over it and if they do, it must be really important but there is no guarantee I'll be there. My son is good about scheduling his personal time on his work calendar as well. He is a bit more cryptic in his description as he uses: "Personal time, do not schedule."

A lot of people complain about their work/life balance and with some companies there is a huge problem. For me, I try to let people know when I am tied up with personal things. Being forthright and honest provides a level of comfort and trust to management. That goes a long way towards evening out the work/life balance and helps make my employment at Sony that much more enjoyable. 

Public Transportation

I was complaining to a good friend about how it is difficult to get around the San Francisco Bay Area without an automobile. I currently have my car here, but would like to drive it back to Salt Lake so my wife can use it to replace one of our dying vehicles. My friend only has one working car and suggested that he does quite well with the help of public transportation.

I have my bike that I can use to get to and from work, which is less than four miles away. Next to my office is a grocery store and so I can easily stock up on food (with the help of a backpack). The only problem I need to solve is how to get to and from the airport each week.

With the help of the Internet, I looked into taking a shuttle bus. While San Francisco airport is only a few miles from my office, Oakland is less expensive to fly in and out of. Unfortunately that means a round-trip $100 shuttle ride each week. It is only $25 to keep my car at the airport each weekend and so the shuttle bus is more expensive than just keeping my car here.

Thinking back to my good friend's comment about public transportation, there is the option of Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART. BART runs between Oakland and San Francisco Airports at a cost of about $9. My office has a shuttle bus to the BART station and so it is just a matter of looking up times and figuring out schedules. Once again, it is the Internet to the rescue. Looking at the BART website, the ride takes about an hour. I think I may have solved the problem. Now if I could figure out how to keep it from raining when I am on my bike . . .