It amuses me that almost immediately after writing a scathing review of the idea of organizing personal changes around January 1 (the first paragraph is totally about that), my brain has picked today, January 2, as the day for me to be introspective. It doesn't happen as often as it should, but it probably happens more for me than for most. It happened to me today as I'm sucking back some sniffles of unknown origin, having just finished up playing a bit of a flash game. Odd time, I know. It's important not to dwell on such timings though, as they often distract from what's important, and what's important in this case is what I realized about myself, and what I realized about myself is this:

I waste a lot of time.

It's been a while since I posted up my to-do list, but rest assured it still exists, and it's still rather lengthy. I'm not looking at it right now, but it contains at least the following:

- swap TVs in the basement
- finish the walls in the basement
- finish the ceiling in the basement
- install the floor in the basement
- fantasy book series
- fantasy series prequel book (just the one)
- 2 horror books
- more Haiku (always more Haiku)
- website for Mom
- web tool for me
- update Rooster Tooths for new purposes
- web tool for the Escapist
- lots of reading
- finish cleaning bedroom
- sell Magic cards
- more HTNS

Now, here are the things I waste most of my time on:
- web communities
- flash games

That's pretty much it. I mean, there are other things I spend time on, but it tends to be short amounts at a time. Reading web comics, for instance. At the moment I keep up with [citation_needed], Order of the Stick, xkcd, Garfield minus Garfield, Least I Could Do, Looking for Group, Darths & Droids, and Cyanide & Happiness. At the most these take about 5 minutes of my week. Every other week I spend a few minutes watching what's new over at Ill Will Press, and every Wednesday I watch Zero Punctuation. There are a lot of things here, but they eat up very little of my time. Other than while eating or on weekends I don't watch much TV, so it's not a problem either any more.

So, since when asked I always advocate changing as soon as you realize something needs changing, I'm going to make a concerted effort to change right now. For 2009 I changed the music I listen to, so since it's the beginning of the year I'm going to make a change for 2011. Except for weekends, I am not going to be on any community site (including this one) before 7PM Toronto time, for any length of time, for any reason. I will also not play any flash games before 7PM. Like with the change in music, this is an all at once, cold turkey deal.

Now, since I obviously require downtime sometimes, because I can't be working constantly all the time, I'm going to replace any time I would normally spend during the day on these sites with doing something from my list. So rather than take a break from work to catch up on the community websites, I'll take a break to clean, or to write, or to work on another website. The goal here is to train myself to be more disciplined. I'm 30 fucking years old, and I should know better.

What this is not is an effort to change who I am. It's my habits that need to be brought into check here, not my personality. This isn't about what I do or how I do it, but about when I do it. I'll still be the me that you all know and love (or hate, or whatever), I'll just be me away from the site until 7PM or later on weekdays.

So that's what I'm doing this year. What about you?