I'm busy. And probably so are you. But you'd like
to have a social life too, right?

Here's how I get things done and keep a socially
active life at the same time:

Get a scheduling system e.g. PDA, Google
Calendar, Day Planner etc.

In your system, place:

- activities you COMMIT to do e.g. Church, school,
work, family gatherings, dinner dates etc.

- activities that you're interested in but are NOT
COMMITTED to do. Parties, movies, social
gatherings etc. Typically, events you don't have
to RSVP or make reservations.

After these have been placed, you can see what's
happening at one glance. If a COMMITTED activity
gets canceled/postponed etc., then you have
other options to pick from. If you don't feel like
going to XYZ event, then there's ABC event you can
go attend. If you really don't want to do anything,
go home.

In principle, what you're doing is making more
options available. And more options are better,
right?

The hard part is getting other events into your
scheduling system. The solution? Use the net and
the current technology. To gather this
information, I:

- subscribe to various mailing lists
- use RSS feeds on various event sites
- wrote a web spider to gather the information
- use Firefox's "Open All in Tabs" feature using various event bookmarks

I use the cut & paste feature to transfer the data.

CAUTION: It might make your scheduling system
seem packed and probably sloppy to manage. I use
online calendars and a Hipster PDA and it's
easy for me to delete/modify/hide events and plan my
schedule.

Also, it's easy to be overloaded with information.
That's where personal efficiency comes in. Look at
other sources around to handle this. (HINT: Search for
"Getting Things Done")

Comments and additional suggestions are welcome!