Friday, September 20, 2002

Every so often, I consider getting myself A Disciplined Life.

These are the things I'd do every day, and some estimates of how long they'd take:

*Brush teeth twice, floss once (10 minutes, total, OK, I already do this.)
*Exercise -- yoga or walking or t'ai chi (30 minutes to an hour)
*Shower, dress, and other hygiene (40 minutes)
*Cook two meals (45 minutes to 2 hours)
*Eat (45 minutes to one and a half hours)
*Blog (20 minutes)
*Sleep (8 hours)
*Read (1 hour)
*Hobby or craft of the moment (30 minutes to an hour)
*Write fiction (1 to 2 hours)
*Wash dishes (30 minutes)
*Straighten the house (20 minutes)
*Deal with physical mail (20 minutes)
*Deal with email (15 minutes)
*Feed cats twice daily and clean litter once (15 minutes)

These are things that need to be done weekly:

*Laundry (two hours hands on work spread across 5 hours)
*Mow lawn and weed (one and a half hours)
*Visit Grandma (one and a half hours)
*Visit or write to other friends and family (one to two hours)
*Spend quality time with Doug (eight hours)
*Put out trash and recycling (half hour)
*Make cat food (forty-five minutes)
*Shop (three to four hours)
*Pay bills (four to six hours twice monthly, call it two hours weekly)

Possibly I'm forgetting things. On the short end, I add that up to 15 hours and 20 minutes daily, or 7 hours 20 minutes plus sleep. Another 20 hours and 15 minutes of weekly activities, divided by seven days, adds almost three hours per day, nearly 10 hours 15 minutes outside of sleep that I'd need to spend to get all these things done. And those were the short estimates!

I think I see why I'm not doing this.