More Procrastinating

Remember when I said that working on scheduling was going to be my next Small Change? I swear I am trying, really. But sometimes it just doesn't happen like I would hope and plan.  This is going to be a Small Change that takes a LOT of effort on my part. When you work for yourself, it's so easy to float from thing to thing AS YOU LIKE rather than AS IT SHOULD BE DONE. This leaves me often feeling like I never get my head above water, but it's my own darn fault for not developing some better habits.

Here is the schedule I designed for myself for Monday:
Well, never mind. I can't find the schedule I wrote (sigh). But it looked something like this:
Kids up, drive to school: 6-7:30AM
Teach Boot Camp: 7:45-8:30AM
Home and Checking Email, maybe more decaf coffee: 9-9:30AM
Blogging: 9:30-10:30AM
Breakfast: 10:30-10:45AM
Free internet time till 11:30
FTP and Boot Camp Work: 11:30-1:30
Pick up kids
No work in the afternoon
Teach Boot Camp 5:30-6:15PM
Cook Dinner

Welllll, in my defense, I didn't realize when I made this schedule that Monday was a school holiday. The kids were home, so I ended up doing lots of stuff around the house instead. Things I did besides any kind of work whatsoever:

• Peeled wallpaper
• Hung 2 rugs outside, beat them with a golf club, then brought them back inside
• Cooked flat iron steaks in the Sous Vide
• Hung out with my kiddos
• Made my 16 year old drive me (he is getting ready for driving test) to the farm co-op to look at chicks and chicken supplies, then to Kroger for liquid fabric softener for peeling wallpaper (turned into liquid fabric softener, sushi for 16 year old, avocados/bananas/freshly ground almond butter for muffins). 
• I would also like to mention that we drove by the mini horse farm (small horses, not small farm) and there was a mini pony in the field. It was so cute I almost died of a cute-attack.

Tuesday I tried again. Things I ended up doing instead of working on my to-do list:

• Answered emails, phone calls, and Facebook inquiries about my Living Social deal for Boot Camp.
• Had a 1.5 hour meeting at Panera
• Watched a 1:15 (yes, one HOUR and 15 minute) You Tube video on pasture management in beef cattle farming  (I have no cattle and only an acre or so of pasture)
• Read about what to grow so I can make my own chicken feed (I have no chickens)
• Read about square foot and raised bed gardening only to decide I'm going to lasagna instead
• Ordered way too many heirloom seeds for garden
• Made the rest of the steak (it had been cooking since Monday, so 18 hours in the Sous Vide and was by far the best steak I have ever made
• Not blog
• Hung out with my cousin who was here for a day
• Watched a terrible show on Netflix about animal hoarders

I think the lesson I continually learn when it comes to goal setting and new habits is that you have to start out small. I can't plan out an entire day and hate myself for failing to do it all. I didn't do it all because I was too overwhelmed with the idea of a perfect work day. I think I need to set smaller goals for the day and bigger goals for every 5-7 days.

Number one on the list is to spend some time AWAY from home working. I am so much more productive when I have no distractions. One thing that the book "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength" discussed is setting up your time to have only two options: work or nothing. If you have stuff you need to get done and procrastinate a lot, go to the library, Starbucks, or even stay home. Set a period of time, like 3 hours. You can work or you can do nothing. I have been using Starbucks but I think for blogging work I will be better off at the library, without internet access.
You can read more about the "doing nothing" option on the great Happiness Project blog. As for myself, I want to spend one 2 hour block at some point in the next 3-4 days at the library writing blogs. Let's see if I can get that one task done.