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Plan. Fail. Repeat.


I was told as little child that I should wake up with a smile on my face. Everyday. Because my parents believe, that how you wake up in the morning, determines how your day is going to be. And so, most days, I wake up with a positive attitude. Trying to trick the day into being good to me.

But today was different.

I have been on a sort of ‘think-mode’ for the past few days now, and sometime last night, I must have been contemplating the current state of my work. Because today morning, as I opened my eyes to a brand new day and a brand new month; the one thought in my head was – that I wasn’t doing enough. That I wasn’t utilising my time properly. Now, I am a firm believer that one should always dream big. And if one has built castles in the air as part of that dream, then one should also do all it takes, to put the foundation beneath them. And it was this thought, that I wasn’t working towards the foundation enough that had me distressed.   

I mentioned this to the husband, who (not surprisingly) agreed and suggested I take a hard look at what I was spending most of my time on and see what changes I could make in the way I managed my time. Genius! The husband has a wonderful knack of providing solutions. (Although, sometimes when I am only in the mood to talk, not really asking for solutions, this is a bit unnerving.) But today, I was glad for the advice and spent a few minutes making a list of the time I had on hand vis-à-vis the work I had in hand at the moment; coming up with a schedule. Great! Now I was all psyched up and I couldn’t wait to get to my laptop!

But that was not to be. My laptop, unlike me, was not all charged up. I seemed to have forgotten to shut it down last night, and the battery had run out. Knowing that charging it enough to even get it started would take a bit of time, I took myself to the kitchen to make some tea. I also attended to a few chores while the tea was getting ready; and when I came back to my desk, I saw that the laptop still hadn’t lit up! Okay. It was still early. I could spare a few minutes. And so, sipping the hot tea, I picked up my Kindle. Just a few pages, I told myself, I would read just a few pages till the laptop wakes up; after all, I am lucky to be working from home; if I were on the road to work, wouldn’t I be reading right now to kill the time? Same thing, I told myself. Same thing.

The book was very engrossing and by the time I was done with a few chapters, my tea cup was empty and the laptop was ready to welcome me with the password screen showing. Great! Only, when I looked at the watch, I realised an hour had gone by already. A little more than an hour, in fact!

But I shook myself mentally. That’s okay. If I were actually commuting to work, this is how it would be. In fact, I’d have probably lost more time. I am still lucky I only lost an hour. Precious hour, a little voice in my head said. But I ignored it. And now, I was ready to take on the day. After the initial checking of the emails, and the dropping in on social media (for half an hour!) to ensure that everything was fine with the world around me, I was ready to begin work.

Fifteen minutes into the research I was doing on a certain topic, I came across an interesting article. Reading it was illuminating and charged me up. I now wanted to read everything I could find related to it; and that was exactly what I did. From there, I didn’t even realise when I checked out a certain viral video, which led to another video, and another and another – until, I got a phone call that broke the chain.

Time lost: an hour and a half. (In addition to the hour I had already lost on the Kindle and the half hour on social media.)
No big deal? Well, sadly, these lost three hours, are three hours I cannot afford to lose.

You see, I am a freelancer, self-employed. Meaning, I keep my hours and I choose my clients. Sounds exciting? Well, it is only good for someone who actually keeps their own time. And as a full-time-at-home parent, I get only a certain number of hours to do my work and give my best output. You begin to see now? The best output in the least time. For something that most of my office-going friends (and the husband) is given almost all the work day and then some late night laptop sessions, I get only a few hours (four or five maximum); and I am still expected to churn out quality. No complaints, though, I love to do it! No two ways about it.

But on days like today, that is not a very comfortable place to be in.

And so I have now made a new plan. I will, from now on, write down all that I do. Like they advise you when you go on a diet? To write down all that you have eaten, so that you know where you went wrong and you can take lessons from there? (If you take lessons, that is. But hey, it is a start!)
So here I am, making a note of all the time I lost today. (Losing a little more time in the process writing this blog post, but all for a good cause, I believe.) I am now hoping that this way, I will be able to track and utilize my time better. Of course, how helpful it is, only time will tell. But at least that is the plan. For now. 

What about you? Do you lose track of time when you are on the internet or with a book? And what do you do when your plan fails to realise? 

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