The first step is to admit you have a problem

unemployment, originally uploaded by recovering lazyholic.

To several of you, this illustration by Erin of Recovering Lazyholic, is probably kind of confusing. Am I right?

To me, I can easily recognize the 7 elements in this "circle of no life" as (CW from top): RSS feeds; flickr; facebook; Gmail; tumblr (this is the only one I had trouble with); Blogger and Twitter.

If I'm not pressed for time (when am I lately?), and have the luxury of enjoying a mug of coffee while the boys might play a Yo Gabba Gabba game on nickjr.com, then I can usually make it 'round this circle in about 30 - 40 min. A majority of the time it is just reading or "checking" what might be new since the night before. Sometimes I'll take a moment to leave a comment on a photo or blog post or to update my "status."

Sure 30 - 40 min is bit much, but wouldn't it take that long to page through a morning newspaper? Where I feel the problem starts for me is when I've gone full circle, and then start right back 'round again, as if transfixed by the glowing screen. Or when you step away only to come back "check" in again less than an hour later. I mean really. This is when it moves into procrastination and wasted time and "no life" territory. Not to mention the fact that in the meantime my children have now burned through close to an hour of their recommended maximum screen time (two hours daily of TV and/or computer games combined).

Time management is something I'm working on. This week I've been testing out a daily schedule, with the main goal being planning a routine of things to do during the day in between allotted times for staring at screens. It is kind of hard. But I'm trying.

So I'm stepping away now. Time to unplug again. I'm not promising I won't "check in" later, but for now I'm going outside with the kids.

Have a good weekend!

PS - It took me about half a day to put away all that laundry.