In theory:
- Start up laptop.
- Make a cup of tea.
- Open a textbook.
- Read the textbook. Write notes.
- Google the **** out of anything that doesn’t make sense.
- After an hour or so, go to step 2. After 2 or 3 repetitions, go do something fun for a while.
Note how simple this seems.
In practise:
- Start up laptop.
- Make a cup of tea.
- Open a few textbooks and arrange them neatly on desk.
- Check email.
- Check Facebook.
- Check blog statistics.
- Go get another cup of tea, because the last one has gone cold.
- Go and sit on the deck for a bit.
- Water the garden.
- Unload the dishwasher.
- Take out the garbage.
- Check Facebook again.
- Clean bedroom floor.
- Go grocery shopping.
- Read Hack-a-Day.
- Read Wikipedia articles on things like DIN41612 connectors and VMEbus.
- Read the VMEbus specification. In full. Get bored.
- Go outside and sit in the sun again.
- Parents are home, go inside and look busy at your desk for a while.
- Write a blog post.
- Polish the dress shoes you haven’t worn in years.
- Make a catalogue of every single computer part you own.
- Consider building a new alarm clock for a while, then decide not to.
- Watch a season or two of Daria and/or Coupling.
- Watch every Star Wars movie in order to decide which is best.
- Purchase and install a new ADSL modem.
- Plant some chilli plants.
- Plan a holiday. Spend an annoyingly large sum of money on airfares.
- Realise the first exam is only a day away now.
- Study.