What may be helpful for you is to make a schedule. I know for your exercise routine it helps to have a set time that you do it every day. Remember, doing something for 21 days makes it a habit so aim for that first. You can check out my thread here for an excellent website that will not only give you great recommendations for fitness but it has a handy calendar that shows what you have accomplished. As to the reading and such I would just pile up the books and begin.

I think you should portion your day out, however, and devote time to each of the areas you would like to improve on. After a certain cut-off time, call it a day and play video games or watch tv or whatever you like to do in your free time. You won't feel guilty about doing this because you've already worked out for the day and accomplished a great deal for that day. Also, as it is the summer and unless you have some strict goals in mind, I wouldn't kill myself trying to do all of those things except for the exercise (remember, 21 days). ;)

Get it put down on paper first of all. You have four simple goals. I guess I call them simple because at least you know what you want to do. I would suggest that you start "business work" in accordance to this article: http://www.timemanaged.com/articles/besttime.php

I would excerise after you've done four to five hours worth of computer work to give yourself a small break from that. Running or working out in a gym would give you great time to analyze the work you've done so far and what else you need to do. If you have a voice dictication device you could record some notes in various parts of your workout when your getting water or when a great thought comes to you. Your cell phone normally has this feature.

Start early in the day. Your on a mini break from school so I say being ready to go by nine is early but at the same time fairly late. Prioritize your objectives.

"A year from now you'll wish you had started today"

Thanks so much for the advice!

I just made a little chart on one of my whiteboards with a bunch of bubbles to be filled in after an hour/unit of work.

I do need a schedule, just scheduling every single aspect wouldn't be good. Only the important things like when to start, when to finish, when to break, when to exercise, etc would be good.

I'll need to figure out a time to get up. I was thinking I ought to get up early, because it at least would let me get a lot done before the day's really started, but also I have the normal coder tendancy of getting lots done while staying up all night.

It's weird adjusting. I keep nagging myself about my homework when I realize I haven't got any.

I just finished reading The Now Habit by Neil Fiore, and he has a great idea about scheduling your time called The Unschedule. You basically plan all your leisure activities, meals, sleep, commuting, prior committments, etc to make sure you take time for yourself and to give you a realistic picture of how much time you really have to work on projects. Then you fill in any time you do work on these projects. It serves as both a tracking tool, to see how much you have actually accomplished, and as a planner. Given the freedom you have to set your own schedule right now, you might find this useful.

As a freelancer working at home with several different hats, I have similar issues. One of my solutions is to make goals for amounts of work done in various areas (number of hours on current art piece, number of hours or pages indexed). When necessary (which is usually) I give myself stickers or prizes for meeting these goals. For a long time I just added up and got a reward when I'd reached a certain level. Lately I've had some success with just deciding to do four hours of indexing and two hours of art per day. Once I finish the indexing (money work) my time is mine.

How wonderful that you have this time! Let us know how it goes!

Do Mi

I've graduated and all that jazz and have started working.

I made a chart thingy on my whiteboard to see how many hours I worked. First week didn't go so well, only a total of 19 hours. This week was much better with a total of 36 hours, plus I resumed my exercise routine and read a bunch, even did an emergency redesign of my personal site.

I count "work" as anything constructive (client work, reading, working on my business, exercising, organizing). I use a few different colors to denote what kind of "work" I was doing. The loose definition is basically to give myself incentive to do *something* other than sit around, and because things I do count do relate reasonably well to what I want to accomplish by the end of the summer. (Example: with exercising, by the end of the summer, I can arrive at college merely an annoying learning disabled kid, not a fat annoying learning disabled kid.)

I've had a great amount of trouble in establishing a sleep routine. I've at least gotten up before noon every day, but the days when I don't sleep through the alarm, I'm pretty groggy and unproductive for the rest of the day. And sometimes I get tired at around the time I should in the evening and go to bed expecting to wake up the next morning refreshed and ready to do stuff....and it ends up being more a siesta and I'm up all night trying to sleep. I need to go read Steve Pavlina's article again.

And a few times I've gotten this dreaded feeling. You know it, I'm sure: eyes out of focus, mentally tired but perfectly alert, fully conscious of what needs to be done, but with no ability to focus. I felt like that today for a while, then I realized that when I got it during studying, I had a handy remedy in the form of a list in my back pocket.

In short, I've gotten off to a rocky start, but I really haven't felt better in quite a while. I'm tremendously motivated in everything I do now, especially now that I have the time to dig into stuff. I just need to develop the techniques and/or procure the caffeine to get it done before the summer closes. :)

As a young person, you might just need more sleep. Adolescents need a ton of sleep, and physiologically they're just not wired to get up early. You may be feeling some hangover effects from that at your advanced age. (if I used smilies there would be one here)

I'd say experiment with what makes you feel best and most productive. If you can have a kickass day by getting up at 10:00, that's smarter than shuffling through a braindead day because you made yourself get up at 8:30.

(And Pavlina is a mutant. I'm sure he is a nice mutant, but I don't think most humans can do what he did with regards to sleep.)

even as a college student, sleep is something that I still struggle with. any tips? I find myself losing track of time, then bam its 2 or 3 am. And I've got something important that needs to be taken care of first thing in the morning.