Journaling your day

This fella has all the time in the world!

 Where does the day go?  How can it be this late?  These are two questions many of us ask ourselves each and every day.  We all know how it goes.  It's a vicious cycle.  We start a load of laundry which leads us to the stray sock.  We take the stray sock to the bedroom of the child it belongs too and then you find yourself doing other things in their room.  An hour later you say to yourself  oh yeah, I forgot about the laundry.  Lather, rinse repeat and sure enough its dark and you haven't given a second thought to dinner.  

Distraction is every one's enemy.  Nobody escapes.  How bad of a victim of this are you going to allow yourself to be.  After so many disappointing days of getting nothing done I was determined to find where I was losing so much time.  How was I ever going to find the missing link.  I decided to start a simple journal to see if I could expose where father time was stashing my valuable lost minutes, hours and days.  I logged trivial things as well as family events and things I actually enjoyed doing.  It exposed horrors and indiscretions I had no idea I was making.  I spent an hour tweezing my brows?  Wait a minute, I checked email for three hours?  I was on facebook for how long?  Unbelievable!  I thought I was reading the journal of a professional lallygagger.  It couldn't be me wasting all this valuable time.  

You may be asking me what the assignment is.  All of these entries are going to be paired with an actual assignment you need to participate in.  How else are you going to make the changes.  You are not going to change your life and free up time simply be reading my blog.    
Get yourself a journal or a note book.  I don't recommend using a computer for this since you will want to keep this journal with you at all times.  I often use the notepad on my iphone.  I always have it with me.  Do what works best for you.  Treat yourself to a nice one with a pretty picture or buy a simple one from the drugstore.

Once you have the notebook start logging what you do as the day progresses.  Start with the first thing you do when you open your eyes.  If you like to linger for a half hour over a cup of coffee, please do.  Just make sure your write down how long you actually spent. Don't edit or change your habits so that your notebook looks good.  You should be the only one reading it so be honest.  If you took a three hour shower, write it down.  If that five minute phone call ended up taking two hours, write it down.  Just write, write and write some more until your head hits the pillow.

Continue to journal each day.  Review your recent entries at the end of the day.  Are there patterns emerging?  Are there things you can change?  Are you in awe of things you thought took less time than they actually do.  You may find things in a day or it may take you a month to find where your lost time is.  Take as much or as little time as needed to make your discoveries.  This is not a timed assignment.  Once you uncover the lost time, it can be slowly converted to productive pockets of time.  

My next article will be how to analyze and unlock lost time.  We will then apply that lost time on more desirable endeavors.  Until then, journal away!

Today is the only day that you will see two entries from me.  Once I post an article, I will give you a weeks time to absorb the content and try it on for size.  Remember, Rome was not built in a day.  Let me know if you have a specific issue and I will try to address it in the form of an article.  Most problems do have a solution.