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An accomplished colleague of mine keeps a schedule too. But hers is a very different order of schedule than mine. How so, Laurence? For one, if you want to know what she'll be doing ten years from now, it's in her schedule. Two, whereas my schedule's slots are mostly a half hour to an hour's duration, her schedule for the next ten years comprises fifteen minute slots. In other words, she's already scheduled what she'll be doing in quarter hour increments for the next ten years. Now before you go on a tear about that being the antithesis of being spontaneous, consider being spontaneous is largely a matter of being creative. So rather than delay being creative until the mood strikes, she's scheduled the time to be creative ... in quarter hour increments ... for the next ten years. So much for the antithesis of being spontaneous.
One day I happened to notice her calendar open on her desk. While it was none of my business, I couldn't help but see it. Every quarter hour slot for the next ten years was annotated and color coded ... every one that is, except for a few dispersed throughout the page which were un-annotated and un-colored. What were they? "What is with all the empty white slots?" I inquired. "Oh, those? They're in case of curveballs.". Curveballs? I'm sports-illiterate. I had to look it up.
