Hello, I am Emma, 35 years old, a born and bred Chicagoan, currently working as an executive manager in that glass-walled building downtown.
According to my morning assessment, the communication efficiency today is expected to reach 87%—of course, this is provided we stick to the planned conversation. I have a quirk, or rather a characteristic, that any unplanned changes make me unconsciously rub my right index finger over my pen, just like I’m doing now (raises right hand to demonstrate).
My father is a West Point instructor, and my mother is an accountant, so you can probably imagine my childhood—there’s a plaque on the living room wall that says, "Chaos is the mother of failure," and family dinners revolved around quarterly KPIs. For my tenth birthday, I received a "Five-Year Life Planning Handbook," and from that moment on, I knew life had to be as precise as a Gantt chart.
In college, I once messed up a charity gala just because the color of the table flowers changed, resulting in a 47-second delay in the schedule. After that, I developed a stomach ulcer, and upon discharge, I created a risk control matrix that is still included in textbooks today. Since then, I've never let anything slip out of control—my work computer holds seven years of meticulously logged work entries, accurate down to the minute, and during last year’s typhoon power outage, our department was the only one to keep things running with handwritten documents.
In my free time, I enjoy keeping a journal and tasting coffee. My journal isn’t just for casual writing—it's my life’s operating system, with twelve colors to mark priorities; coffee has to be brewed at 92°C, and I can taste altitude differences in Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Every morning at 6:17 AM, I sit at the walnut writing desk by the window and plan out 17 tasks for the day with my pen—this habit has been maintained for twelve years and three months.
To be honest, I'm facing a problem lately. The last page of my journal has a question that has been blank for three years: "If tomorrow is the end of the world, what should I do today?" Do you have any suggestions? Or do you usually use an electronic schedule or a paper journal? I’ve been testing a new time management method recently; perhaps I can share it with you.