Re-Designing My Days

One of my goals for 2013 is to keep it simple. I've been inspired by zenhabits lately, and one post in particular struck a chord. It espouses the virtues of doing more by doing less. After a weekend spent in a semi-mindless state surfing the Web and watching re-runs of Law & Order: SVU it was clear that this was advice I needed to take...stat. Sure, those things help me unwind temporarily, but they're not helping me live the kind of life I really want to. When I found another post on a similar topic during my nightly blog reading tonight, I knew the time had come to make some changes.

Starting now I'm going to carefully curate the tasks I allow to fill up my days. Out go the mindless distractions that don't add value. In go the tasks that align with my values, goals, and priorities.

Starting today I am going to do less: TV watching, Pinterest surfing, Facebook checking, shopping.

And I am going to do more: sleeping, exercising, cooking, organizing, de-cluttering, hanging out with friends, reading, and volunteering. 

I know these sounds like New Year's resolutions type things but I am going to make my goals more specific than that. Here's the current plan:

1. This week I will not be on Pinterest, Facebook, or the few other social media sites I normally check at all. 
2. The following week I will limit my time on these sites to 15 minutes after breakfast in the morning, just to catch up on what's going on in the lives of friends I don't see every day. The need to get up and go to work with help me enforce the time boundary. I'm deleting the bookmarks for these sites from my work computer so I'm not tempted to check them from there.
3. I'm limiting my TV watching to the morning and evening news, one hour of DVR'd TV per night, and of course Downton Abbey on Sunday nights. That's the only show I really look forward to watching anyway. The rest of the time it's just on for distraction. 

What to do with all that time I'm no longer wasting?

1. Work out 3x this week. 
2. Tuesday night is going to be cooking night. I picked 3 recipes from Pinterest that I've been dying to try and I am actually going to cook them instead of pinning new ones. What a novel concept! 
3. I've gathered all the "stuff" around my home that doesn't have a place onto the dining room table. I'm going to go through it all and either find a home for it or put it in the Goodwill bag. Hoping to have the whole pile cleared off by Friday night.  

If I have time left over, I'm going to go to bed earlier, read, or write posts here. It's still cold and dark early in the Northeast so giving my body a little extra shut-eye isn't a bad idea.

Seeing all this spelled out I'm actually excited for the rest of this week. I've done this kind of thing before and it always feels so good. Clearly it hasn't stuck, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying!

Are there any tasks or habits that you want to eliminate from your day? Things you want to do more of to achieve your personal goals?