Disappearing Time

I have decided there officially aren’t enough hours in a day.

You might have heard it before; you might have even uttered it before. But seriously, since the beginning of the New Year, which officially was Monday for me, I have been making to-do lists on things I promised myself I would start doing this year. I have a list of daily things as opposed to those that are general. I don’t think my list is that outrageous. It involves returning emails more quickly and thus writing a few emails a day. Updating this site and writing a bit each day. That’s pretty much it. Oh, and doing more things outside each day. Yet, it’s only been two days and I am already behind.

I have to get up at 7am at work and I am ‘at work’ until around 5. Last night, I met a friend at 7 to go to Pilates and by the time we came back it was already 9. So I had a total of three hours to play with: the time between 5 and 7 and between 9 and 10. I am completely out of commission by 10pm and in my third dream by 11. Even if I try to stay up late, my brain is definitely not working past then. Three hours might sound like a reasonable amount of time to get something done, but it hasn’t proven so. It takes me a while to move from task to task. Writing and putting the site up takes about 45 minutes, assuming I know what I plan to write about, which is often not the case. Writing fiction is yet another huge problem since there are times I could stare at the monitor for a full hour before I type even one word, so knowing that the clock is ticking only makes things harder.

What I want to know is how do other people do it? Where is this time that I have no access to? Am I just wasting it?