I'm not even any good at it, but we can do a few things to modify our awarded line by dropping, trading, and picking up trips to meet our own priorities. Some examples...

Pilots on reserve can't pick up trips straight out of open time, but they can drop reserve days if there are enough reserves on the schedule to cover a pre-determined reserve buffer. Then most guys on reserve will almost always get calls from scheduling offering trips with some sort of overtime bonus. If they really need you for a trip on your day off, they might drop other reserve days with pay protected to ensure you get your min days off.

If you have a line, you can drop or trade trips and even pick up trips from another base which is useful for some people. You can bid a base where you have seniority, drop most of your schedule, then pick up better trips from other bases or wait for scheduling to call with something better.

For me, I wanted time off while I am on first year pay so I pretty much try to drop my entire schedule then pick back up 1-2 day trips that work for me, or take a trip that pays an overtime bonus when scheduling calls me and it works with my family schedule. Even as a new guy, I've typically had only one or two trips per month that I "had to do", and I have been able to meet or beat guarantee almost every month flying mostly trips that were convenient to me. And that's with low seniority and not really working the scheduling rules to the max advantage like some guys do.

One month I needed a full week off for a family activity but we're guaranteed 4 days off between trips which ties scheduling's hands. So I bid and got a relief line and waived the 4-day off rule if they could get me all of my desired days off. They stacked my whole month's schedule into the first 2 weeks of the month so I had the entire last half of the month off for my family activity. Those 2 weeks sucked but it got me the time off I wanted in spite of low seniority.

A little while back I dropped almost my entire month, picked up a couple high-hour trips, and got 120 hours credit flying just a few trips of my choice. Can't do that every month but its possible to get decent extra hours credit flying mostly lines that you choose if you work the schedule process correctly.

Another guy I know who commutes does kind of the same thing... Drops everything that isn't commute friendly then picks back up convenient trips, often with a few hours extra thrown in if scheduling calls for some help with an un-covered trip.

The trips themselves aren't anything special and some are rather inefficient and painful (4-day where every day alternates early morning and late evening report times) but the ability to modify the schedule here to meet your own priorities is pretty good.

I know some other companies have pretty good flexibility especially once you're senior, it just seems really easy to do here even with low seniority.

Not saying that everything is rosy here with regards to QOL and both on and off the job BS can reach epic proportions (been sued by your boss lately?) but I've found some of it to be great for my own circumstances.