The main thing I learned is that there's no such thing as a perfect day. If you sit around and wait for it to come, you'll be waiting until they haul your corpse away. The truth is that things always come up, especially as you get older. You have to plan around uncertain events instead of planning for your day to go a certain way.

Over the past few months both of my parents have been in and out of the hospital repeatedly. I live closeby, so I've been taking a lot of days off work or working remotely to help them get to and from the hospital, and then to help them get situated afterwards. I had to carry my mother up the stairs in her home a few weeks ago because her knees are giving out. I didn't think I would have to do something like that at this age--I'm in my late 20's--but, as the phrase goes, "shit happens."

The reason I brought that up is because I've also been thinking about making a job change to a different company. It'll probably require a few weeks of preparation, and then another few weeks to interview with various companies. I'm also a little scared about the whole situation because I'm woefully underprepared, so I don't know how I'll perform.

So I keep telling myself, "tomorrow, when I'm fresh in the morning, I'll come up with a study guide!" Then something comes up, and "tomorrow" becomes "this weekend." Then something else comes up, and "this weekend" becomes "next week." The something's aren't always bad things--I've been attending a lot of weddings recently, and also some of my friends and family are having kids, so it's been an overall positive thing--but distractions are still distractions, and I haven't been able to plan out any of those.

So I think what I have to do is just carve out time when and where I can. I might not get the six hours of uninterrupted study that I could get when I was 19, but I could certainly have done a far better job of studying than I actually did.

I have some more thoughts on all of this, but I really liked this question because it made me think about how these past few months really went.

EDIT:

I just wanted to edit this post and say that there are some outstanding responses in this thread. I'm never less than amazed at how reflective and thoughtful people can be. There's probably enough life advice and experience in this thread to fill a few books.

I have this habit of checking how "great" people have responded to certain situations, but now I'm realizing that "ordinary" people (whatever that means) might have just as thoughtful, reflective, and wise approaches to things. Instead of looking up the 18th article of how entrepreneurs respond to stress, I could probably sit down with my grandmother and ask her what it was like moving to a foreign country by herself where she didn't know a single person or speak the native tongue.

I'm rambling now, but I just wanted to say that the advice in here is pretty spectacular. I usually regret the time I spend on Reddit and YouTube, but I seldom regret the time I spend on HN (unless I find myself in a political thread).