Are you a Fritterer or a Savorer?

What are the ways that you waste time?

How about the ways that you savor it?

Do you think about these differences? Having worked from home for over three years now, I'm keenly aware of time. For the first couple years I was amazed at how much I could fit into a day: gardening, cooking, writing for pleasure, writing for work, cleaning, walking downtown, visiting with friends, exercising. I took full advantage of my newfound freedom from a restrictive office-based schedule. But slowly I have managed to fritter just as much time away as I save. Most often by sitting staring at my computer screen, caught between activities. I go into a kind of trance that I must literally wrench myself from. I've taken to opening the project I must work on right away, so that in the first pause after screen-glaring, I will see that project blinking at me like a puppy waiting to be walked.

So I've decided to try and savor time more. The way to do this, I've found, is to put fiction writing first, even if I'm "not in the mood." Then to move on to quality time in the first project on my list, and then, to take a break. In that break I can swim or eat or walk downtown or see a friend or even a couple of those things. Strangely, when I give myself that break, I actually manage to get more done and the day feels less wasted and there is a whole lot less glazy-eyed frittering going on.

How about you? How do you balance your time?

JPR