Today is Day 2... What am I doing?

New habits are hard to start.

Right now it is 5:30 am, and I am sitting at my computer in the dark so that I don’t wake up my wife or my son.

I have been looking back over the past 10 weeks and have noticed a few things in this review. I have started a new position as the Aquatic Science teacher at a local high school; I have been working to build my new hydroponic farm; I have been working to build the next pieces on my tiny house; I have been helping my wife build her therapy practice; and I have been working with my son to help him learn time management skills that will keep his grades out of the red zone.

Oh, and I have also been beating myself up about the fact that I can’t seem to find the time to write this blog consistently and that I spend more time scrolling on social media than I do creating and interacting.

Truthfully, the last three weeks have been pretty miserable for me. So eventually, I made the decision to do something about it. A big part of my malaise has been that I seem to have this ever-growing list of items and tasks on my to-do list, and no matter if I have a productive day and cross 10 things off or a bad day and only cross off one, I always end the day with more things than I started with.

This led me in a spiral when I began to ask if I was doing too much. If I needed to cut a few things out so I could focus on what was most important? Or if I was just doing things to please the algorithm gods, and not being authentic to myself and my mission.

On Sunday, I finally had that fantastic “light-bulb” realization that I needed to make a schedule for myself and stick to it. For these last 10 weeks, I have simply had a SINGLE GIANT LIST with every task on it. No wonder I felt overwhelmed by every task from my work, family, personal, and entrepreneurial life.

I know that I will revise this, but for now, I have settled on the following focused blocks or “chunks” of time in my day:

• Writing Time (4:45-5:45 am)

• School Work - Grading and Prep (3:00 -4:30 pm)

• Twitter (8:30-9:00 pm)

So I don’t know if this will prove to be a worthwhile experiment or not, but I know that for now simply having a plan that I am trying to execute is making me feel more focused, and I like that.

I will have to see where this goes.