I have a plan to get more goals accomplished including way more running
and doing it consistently. My new plan will also allow me more time to put into my creative pursuits. Here's the recent blog post I wrote about my plans which I've been thinking about a lot but feel empowered to do after reading this tiny book. As I'm writing this I am on my third read through it.
This
book was just what I needed when I needed it. Isn't it great when that happens? I bought it today on audible for under $3 - it's very short. I already listened to it one and a half times. It addresses something I've been thinking about a lot and never successfully doing anything about for a long time. I've been talking for a while about going to bed earlier so I can wake up earlier and have time to run and work on my creative projects like writing. This book gave me a road map to do it.
The author Laura Vanderkam tells you to lay out how you spend your time. She even has an excel spreadsheet you can download for free from her website to fill out to do this. I did, and I saw how I was spending my time in beautiful excel glory. Seeing it like that was very interesting. Laura Vanderkam encourages you to study your time logs and challenge your assumptions about how you think the best time to spend your time is. I was able to rearrange my schedule a bit to have time for things I'm always wishing I was getting done. I looked at what a typical weekday was for me, and then I built my perfect day in a new column.
Here's what I came up with:
5:00AM - 5:30AM Go for a run
5:30AM - 6:00AM Get ready for the day
6:00AM - 7:00AM Commute and write via recording into phone
7:00AM - 7:30AM Transcribe audio of writing / read paper books & eBooks
7:30AM - 3:30PM Work
3:30PM - 4:30PM Commute and read via audio books
10:00PM - Asleep so I can get up at 5 & achieve some goals!
Now with all that said - I'm not going to start this schedule until the Olympics are over. My wife and I are avid Olympic viewers. There are a few reasons, let me explain why we've been staying up till midnight every night watching our country compete. First of all I just think the Olympics are awesome and have always loved them. Beyond that, I've been a distance runner since third grade. In high school running became a huge part of my life. The distance team ran before school, after school, through the off season and even met three times every week during the summer break. It took me until my senior year to make the varsity team in cross country and that year we won the state championships. It was an amazing experience. Mostly I'll aways remember getting up early and running with a bunch of other guys and then listening to classic rock in the coach's office which was lined with couches and a fridge so we could all seat and eat cereal for breakfast afterwards. As for my wife she did gymnastics as a child all the way up to high school becoming a level 8 gymnast. More recently she did a lot of private club gymnastics coaching and high school gymnastics coaching, as well as gymnastics coaching. So with a couple who are passionate about track & field and gymnastics you can see why we stay up to watch. Once they're over there, I'm going to go all out with this new schedule.
