Here’s a typical Wednesday:

8:30 – Wake up unnaturally late and realize I’m missing an 8:30 conference call
8:40 – Dial into conference call from the couch while reading email
9:00 – Take a shower, get dressed
9:40 – Arrive at work, look at calendar for the day: mostly meetings all day
9:45 – Status meeting
10:00 – Schedule conference call for 3 pm
10:15 – Add 5 pm interview to my calendar
10:17 – Respond to request for for a 2-4 pm meeting. Reschedule 3 pm conference call to 4.
10:30 – Find out my 11 am meeting was resceduled to 3. Respond by saying I can’t make it.
11:45 – Do my 10:30 meeting
12:00 – Run errands. Recycling has been in my car for 2 days and is starting to smell. Stop at Wendy’s on the way back.
12:45 – Eat lunch at desk
1:00 – Meeting, wait, no it’s cancelled, spend the hour doing email and writing some documentation
1:30 – Cancel scheduled 2 pm meeting so I can go to the entire 2-4 meeting
2:00 – Go to 2-4 pm meeting
2:30 – Meeting actually starts. Since much of the topic at hand is not directly related to my job, spend most of the meeting reading email on my laptop
3:00 – Respond to IMs and phone calls asking why I’m not at the other meeting.
3:30 – Still reading email while trying to pay attention to meeting at the same time where necessary
4:00 – Run back to my desk to catch conference call.
4:30 – Reread email and discover conference call is tomorrow (misunderstanding), try to figure out what to do with an extra half hour
5:00 – Interview
5:30 – More email and random stuff; no point in starting any projects now; write blog

In summary, my day starts with a schedule which is rapildy changed in the morning, followed by cancellations and movements throughout the day, making it completely unrecognizable by the end of the day. So much for planning.

The upside: I’m pretty much caught up with my email.