Developing A Daily Schedule To Achieve Goals

Recently, Kevin over at No Debt Plan posted about his daily schedule and if it was appropriate for what he wanted to achieve. His excellent post got me thinking about whether or not a more structured daily schedule would allow me to better achieve my goals for 2009.

Current Daily Schedule

Currently, I don’t have a very structured daily schedule. My employer doesn’t seem to mind what hours I work so long as I get my work completed. In fact, I have a coworker who routinely arrives at 1:30 pm.

Throughout the past year I have arrived as early as 7:00 am and as late as 10:00 am. Knowing that I can show up whenever I want usually leads to a lot of snoozing on my alarm clock and lots of wasted time in bed. I’m hoping laying out a strict schedule will allow me to put an end to this wasted time.

Other than work, I tutor 4 hours every Monday and Wednesday night (at least for the rest of the school year). Most days I like to find time for exercise. Depending on the season, I swim, bike, run or lift weights either immediately after I get home from work or sometime after dinner. The rest of my evenings consist of blogging, watching TV and playing video games.

Proposed Schedule

The following is my proposed daily schedule and the reasons behind each activity.

• Wake up around 6:15 and swim - I’m trying to swim as much as possible to increase my cardiovascular fitness and lose 10 pounds. Ideally I will be able to lose some weight before the end of January when I will start running very very low mileage in preparation for an 8k. I’m planning on swimming to start my day to provide me with extra energy for the day. Also, my only other option for swimming is from 9-10 pm, which really breaks up my evenings.
• Arrive at work at 9:00 am -Between swimming and leaving for work I will have to shower and eat breakfast. I’m hoping that I will have at least 30 minutes to work on my blog post for the day as well. I currently don’t eat much of a breakfast, just a granola bar of something similar. Having a consistent and semi-substantial breakfast should help me maintain a suitable level of fitness for exercising. Arriving at work at a consistent time should enhance my co-worker’s opinions of my professionalism.
• Leave work at either 4:30 or 6:00 pm -On days that I tutor I have to leave at 4:30, but on days I don’t tutor I will leave at 6:00. On Mondays and Wednesdays I will work less than 8 hours a day and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday I will work more than 8 hours a day.
• Personal time after work/tutoring – During this personal time I will complete any blog work that isn’t finished prior to going to work. Otherwise, I will play my video games, watch my TV shows or work to advance towards completing my 2009 goals.
• Get in bed as close to 10:00 pm as possible - Ideally I will be in bed at 10:00 pm. I have a hard time getting myself to bed. I usually decide that working on my blog more, or reading a book, or some other random task is more important than sleep. For some reason I am delusional and believe I can continuously work with very little sleep. Hopefully, this daily schedule will allow me to accomplish everything that I want to and at the same time sleep enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Potential Future Modifications

This daily schedule may or may not apply when I begin running more mileage. At first I will start running on weekends only, however, eventually I will have to run during the week. I have yet to decide how my schedule will work when I start running more since I’m usually way too tight in the mornings to run.

Also, I’m hoping to start tutoring on my own, which will have a less defined tutoring schedule. This will allow for a little more freedom, and might be done on weekends only. Or I might be tutoring an hour here and an hour there during the week. Either way, I will have to take that into account later in the year.

Conclusion

I will try to provide updates every now and then with how strictly I’m adhering to my schedule. The hardest part about following through with this schedule will most likely be getting out of bed so early every morning, but I imagine it will get easier the more I do it. I’m looking forward to this schedule since I’m very motivated to get in shape. Now that I have my schedule defined, all I have to do is follow through. As the great Peyton Manning says “It’s on like Donkey Kong!!”

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