Process Shows Priorities

There are all sorts of ways to proclaim your priorities, but what you really do shows what your  priorities really are. Even more telling is the process of choosing what to work on next: is it systematic or careless? What is the system?
I think about this as I practice my organization for post-employment.I need the time to work on things that really interest me but as I see from my practice in the time I've taken off to practice, my procedures in practice are not like the way I get things done at work. At work - as at St. Ed's - there are many processes for scheduling and monitoring work. In such an environment, I am very productive. When working on my own, however, I do not practice time and subject management. I'd like to have the discipline to do that, but so far it's not my personal style. Instead, I tend to work by urgency, freely rescheduling as higher urgencies bubble up. What I need to do, then, is to use a system in which this sort of thing works.
For example, earlier in the day I posted my standard 4freeCLE materials, did standard cleaning and cat care. This is a system I have worked out pretty effectively. For Sunday, I intended to work on friendship and networking by participating in a Sunday soup swap, spent a lot of time cooking and packing the soup, and was well on track when I got a text from Jeff Holy asking to meet for a drink and chat. My first impulse was to regretfully turn him down, as I am busy. But: I wanted to do both. Meeting Jeff is not an easy thing, due to geography, and it's always worthwhile. It was definitely worth working out the timing, and if I was late to the soup party, well there would be a next time.
And so it was: We had a nice lunch at the Roanoke as Jeff and I talked about life. He was headed out to a conference on the Penisula so a longer lunch would not have worked anyway. I then went to the soup party and discovered I was spot on time.
I'm not sure what the lesson is here except that it very much helped to schedule things as they come up so that when a new opportunity comes up, I can figure out how to slot it in,