I attended a ‘Time Management‘ course on Friday presented by my company’s in-house training institute. Frankly, after the previous course I wasn’t looking forward to it (let’s just say the facilitator wasn’t my type). I think the fact that my time management skills was SO bad, and the real urge for me to fix it, overcome this fear. The course turned out to be very useful and this facilitator _much_ better 
So, Java certification? I’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time now but I haven’t had the time. Yeah, I know, it’s everybody’s excuse. Let me put it like this; my dynamic personality has the ability to take on either the chronic-procrastinator-persona or the obsessive-workaholic-persona. It doesn’t leave much space for anything else. In the course they talk about Type A and Type B personalities. Most people know about these already. Type A is the workaholic, perfectionist, I’ll rather do it myself and be sure it’s done right type. Where Type B is more laid back and relaxed.
I knew this stuff before and I knew the characteristics of both applied to me. What I didn’t realise before was that I am Type A at work and Type B at home. To the extent of opposite extremes. In other words, I really did need that course and I really do need to do something about how I spend my time. The certification will require for me to overcome my laziness at home and do some proper hard work. Eek! I do so much like to lie in bed and watch episode after episode of Prison Break or Numb3rs or whatever after a long day of obsessive overindulgent urgency at work… 
I’ve created a schedule that sort of loosely sets out a plan for how I will spend the time that I have to myself on a daily basis. It takes into account time for going to gym three times a week, social nights twice a week, and open weekends. The open nights and weekends can really be used for anything and I can for example swop a Wednesday’s open night around with the studying of Thursday or the reading of Tuesday; to allow for things to happen when the time fits and so not to be too strict.
To start me off on the certification I found that JavaRanch has a lot of useful information and help. I also trolled over to Amazon and found a few books that will help me along, specifically “SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide“. While I was at it I created a Amazon wish-list. *nudge nudge wink wink* 
Right, so according to my schedule…hmm… I was supposed to be in bed 36 minutes ago! *sigh*
[...] sure made up for that phase. I’m convinced my boss must’ve noticed a huge dip in my productivity that week. At the top you have 5 shortcut buttons that you can program to open your favorite [...]