Where the time GOES

This morning over my coffee and croissant I read an article in Redbook magazine called "A to-do list do-over." This is one of those articles where a busy and disorganized mom gets help from an organizational expert in order to streamline her schedule to get things done. In the case of this article, the organization expert was Julie Morgenstern, one of the most known professional organizers around. The desperate woman was a teacher with three kids, one husband and parents who live in the area.

Whenever I read this type of article, I feel a little guilty. If these women with their many and varied priorities can manage to get things done plus have time to exercise and take care of themselves, then I really have no excuse for not getting things done. I'm a single gal with a time consuming job and high maintenance family but since that family lives 1200 miles away and the job is fun, there really shouldn't be problems with getting it all done.

And yet, there are.

I spend many nights sitting in hotel rooms exhausted and curled up in front of the TV with room service. I know this sounds like the life, free and easy, and most of the time it suits me just fine.

But there are times when I just can't get done all the things I want to. Maybe I'm too ambitious – I want to exercise, eat healthy, learn to run a marathon (I run zero steps at the moment), write a novel, revise my website, keep in touch with friends – and many other things. Work tends to be all that gets done. Enough so that my manager recently asked me if I know how to have a life.

I am quite certain that I know how to be lazy and waste time with the best of them. I've been inspired by the article and decided to do my own personal time study. I've participated in a few of these at work where I documented every step and action I take through the day. The purpose of such studies is normally to determine where there is waste and redundancy. A personal time study might have similar results. For a change, I've decided to diagnose the cause of my problem before I try to motivate or plan to fix it.

I'm taking the logical route this time, wish me luck.