Time Not Well Spent

I recently discovered something interesting about myself.

I spend a LOT of time trying to find ways to spend less time on activities, rather than spend my time doing the actual activity.

Does that make sense?

I mean the sentence, not the action...

There are to-do lists all over my desk and calendars placed all over my house. I spend more time on creating those, perfecting them and making them work, rather than just doing the tasks I'm filling all these lists up with.

Like my to-do list to clean the house. Apparently, I need to find the best way to make a list on HOW I should clean, rather than just using that time to just DO the cleaning.

Here are some examples:

1. I made a dry erase board for cleaning the house. Took me a day to buy/create/hang. Did no actual cleaning that day. The dry erase board lasted a whole week and is now gone.

2. Purchased a wonderful daily cleaning chart online. Printed it out. Spent an afternoon at Target trying to find the perfect 3-ring binder for it. Never looked at it again. Pretty sure I still have it though, should I ever have enough interest to find it again.

3. There are several notebooks scattered around my house, full of Pinterest inspired cleaning charts, to-do lists and helpful hints...can't find one of these in the mess I've made.

On that note, now that all 3 of my children are in school, I have from 8:30-11:30, to do whatever I want.

Seriously, that's a looooooong time! I haven't been given a large amount of "free" time like that in awhile. Apparently I don't know how to use it properly.

There's so much I should be doing. Like, I should wash the dishes so that I can bake this afternoon. Or I should be doing the laundry, because my kids are complaining about wearing pajamas to school. And I should be working on this darn book so I can actually accomplish a major life goal of mine.

I have some good intentions at the start of the day. Like how I'm going to sit down, TV off, work on editing the book I wrote, catching up on email and maybe do some cleaning.

Instead, what happens is this:

1. Drop kids off at school. (10 mins)
2. Walk into nice quiet house. (2 seconds)
3. Shut door. (1 second)
4. Look around and marvel at how quiet it is. (2 entire minutes- just to be sure no one else is here.)
5. Squeal loudly and do happy dance in kitchen. (a full 5 minutes-I have great dance moves)
6. Grab coffee and sit at computer. (5 minutes.)
7. Find Facebook, Netflix and a random book I left on my desk. Easily distracted. Forget why I sat down here in the first place. (2 hours later....)
8. Crap! I wanted to clean! I had things to do! Nooooooo! (5 minutes)
9. Well, too late now...might as well finish this book...( last half hour of freedom)
10. Pick up kids and regret my morning decisions. (rest of the day)

I have issues.

But I'm great at making lists.