Leave my office at 6:30 every day

Well whaddya know, I managed to do this three times this week. I’m afraid it’s not because of any change or effort on my part. It’s because I had extra tasks I had to accomplish after work (like special errands) that forced me to leave earlier.

Can I do it again next week? We’ll see.

I haven’t posted on this goal in a while because I’m not making much progress yet. I had planned to update this goal every week with a little progress, but I’m now finding it depressing to think about posting AGAIN how I’ve made no progress.

My current mini-goal is to accomplish this at least 3 times a week. When I’ve done that I’ll add a post but for now I think I will suspend the weekly updates. I find that writing again and again “no success” just makes it harder so I’m going to cut that out.

My leave times for the last week were:
8:30, 6:30, 6:15, 7:00, 9:15, and 10:10 for an average of 7:57.

I am happy with my success of leaving by 6:30 two nights this week. The really late times were extenuating circumstances where I had to work on special projects. Those things happen too often in my life, probably because I let them. But I am also happy that overall my average leave time was earlier by about 15 minutes from last week.

I read a blog post about procrastination a few days ago and one of the headings in the article rang true for me: “You don’t need to have to, you need to want to. I should put up a big sign that says that.

This week’s goal is to have at least 2 or maybe even 3 leave times of 6:30 or earlier.

My leave times this week were: 8:30, 7:30, 7:45, 8:50, and 8:30 for an average of 8:13. That’s about a half hour earlier average than last week, but still no 6:30 on the list. This one needs more focus.

My previous goal of “leave my office at 5:00 every day” was far too ambitious and unrealistic so I’m changing it to 6:30.

I stay after 5 to take care of personal business and emails that I cannot easily do at home. And some days (like today) I end up with too many deadlines that were promised to people and couldn’t be complete before 5:00.

In the last week my leave times have been: 8:35, 9:50, 8:40, 8:00, and 8:35. Does anyone wonder why I have a sleep prolem? Until this pattern changes I can’t make progress on my other important goals.

Hopefully I can make 6:30 at least once in the next week and overall move my leave times earlier.

I’ve decided to do a one month challenge on this one. More specifically my goal is “Stop working at 5:00 and leave the office by 6:00.”

This one has gotten off to a rocky start. On Tuesday I was busy training until 4 so didn’t get started on other work until after that. I ended up staying until 9:15. That’s the kind of pattern that needs to stop.

On Thursday I managed to leave at 7pm, one hour after my goal.

Last night I left at 5pm (yay!). It helped that I had a one-year-old birthday party to attend.

I found some good inspiration for this one. Maybe I should read this article frequently until I make some progress.

This one is really messing me up. The problem has gotten worse, not better. I’m not sure why that is, but I suspect it has to do with not managing my time well – not planning and working my plan.

It’s affecting other areas of my life, though, and it’s time to get serious. I’m going to restart the reminders and start tracking my progress in the same notebook where I record my walking.

I don’t know why this one is so hard for me, but I think I need to redouble my efforts. I hope it will cause a domino effect helping me to go to bed earlier, get up earlier, and get to work on time.

Staying late is a bad habit. And it is keeping me from getting things done at home that I need to do. Time to make some changes.