Routine

I came across this post about finding ways to reclaim your time from the barrage of things that suck up hours of the day. I was most interested in the first item on the list.

Take a time out. Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take a good look at your life. You need to block off at least an hour. Several hours or half a day is better. A whole day would be awesome. A weekend would be even more ideal, though not necessary practical for many folks. With this block of time, take a look at your life with some perspective. Is it what you’ve always wanted? How would you get to where you’ve always wanted to be? What do you enjoy doing, but don’t have enough time to do? What things actually fill up your day? Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time? We’ll look at some of these things in the following items, but it starts with taking a time out to think and plan.

Let's look at the things that occupy my day:

• Let Barry out, then go back to sleep for 30 minutes. As Barry eats breakfast, I either lounge in bed for those last precious minutes, watch tv or lately, do some pilates.
• Take Barry for his morning walk.
• Shower and get ready for work.
• Drive 30 minutes to work.
• Eat breakfast, read personal emails, comics, news, blogs, links, and gossip with coworkers. By 9:00 - 9:15 ish the work day begins.
• For the next 8 hours I hop between reading/writing emails, updating content in courses, editing graphics, chatting with Mike and Steve, internet surfing, eating, phone calls, meetings...
• 30 minute drive home.
• Let Barry out and feed him.
• Make dinner, eat and watch the news on tv.
• 7:00pm take Barry for his hour long walk.
• From 8 to 10 I'm online again either doing homework or blogging/surfing/reading.
• By 10 pm I'm in bed reading a book until I fall asleep.

Hmm... not a very exciting life now that I'm taking a closer look at it. Maybe instead of school, I should take up juggling.