M is for Managing My Time

This will probably be a short post since I have no idea how to manage my time.

Obviously, during the school year about 8 hours of my day is spent at school. I manage that time pretty well. When you teach, you learn pretty quickly that you need to plan to have too much to do. Then you need a plan B in case plan A doesn't pan out. So as lesson planning goes, I do ok. I use my planning periods pretty well, too. I get three planning periods a week: 1 is 50 minutes, the other two are 103 minutes each. On paper it looks like enough, but believe me when I tell you that teaching for 8 hours with only a 25 minute lunch break...in which you are technically on duty...sucks. Bad. At least it's only twice a week I have to deal with that. I manage to keep from having to take work home most of the time. Call be a bad teacher, but if my husband doesn't bring home work then I won't either. Believe me when I say he gets paid more than I and I REFUSE to bring home work for what I get paid.

Anyway, back to managing my time (heck, I can't even manage the topic of this post!) Here's what I want to balance:

• Work
• Reading
• Knitting/Crochet
• Internet

To be honest I don't have to get on the Internet, but I like to. The problem is, I waste too much time while I'm there. For every hour I spend knitting, I've probably wasted 2 or 3 on the Internet. Imagine the kind of productivity rate I would have it I stayed off the computer!

 Frankly I think the Internet makes my mind race, too. I've always got a squillion windows open and I will interrupt one task to go check Google+ or Ravelry forums. (I totally interrupted writing this post to go post something on Ravelry.) I'm seriously considering writing a "To-do" list before I turn on my computer and then not deviating from it. It probably wouldn't hurt to turn off the computer completely one or two days a week, either.

So how do you find balance?