Down the Tubes

I swear, I don't know where my time goes. Or more precisely, I'm afraid I do know where it's going, and I don't much like the answer.

I get to work, I get my coffee, I check emails, and suddenly - poof! - it's time for the 10:00 meeting. I go to the meeting, I do a little work, I check Twitter, and - poof! - it's time to hit the gym. I get back from the gym, I eat lunch and check my RSS feed, then I work on a little project and - poof! - it's 3:30 and my day is mostly gone. I barely had time to touch the work that was supposed to be my primary focus for yesterday.

I think today I'm going to try using some timers to help keep my focus. At least until I'm caught back up. It's not a perfect system, but it at least warns me when I accidentally get sucked into something that I thought would only take a few minutes. Especially when that something is productive to neither my professional nor personal life. Over an hour frittered away on making a promotional flyer for my publications? Probably okay (provided I ever actually print the damn things out and take them somewhere that people might see them). But over an hour spent on my RSS feed? Not so much. I need to learn to let the RSS feed slide and let it be the thing I turn to when I only have a couple of minutes to kill. When I've got a spare hour, I should be doing something productive with it.

So for today: timers. Forty-five minutes (minimum) of work, and then fifteen minutes (maximum) of frittering. Hopefully it will help me get back on track.