At 4 this morning, I gave up sleeping. Blame the rich lobster tail and stuffed baked potatoes we had for dinner last night, or perhaps the 10,000 things I have on my mind, or maybe the faint smell of beach bonfires that sometimes linger in the air now that I live right on the beach. Whatever the reason, I found myself this morning with a rare opportunity to GET SOMETHING DONE.

Perfect, I thought. I can catch up with my Twitter friends. Or better yet, I can start on the outline of my nonfiction book. Or maybe try to empty out the email inbox, or edit my friend’s resume, or perhaps finally set up a Facebook page. Oh yeah, I need to add a few more entries to the Avenue Z Toolbox. Oohh… I have it…. I wrote 1500 words on my novel last Sunday with the San Diego writer’s group. Why don’t I add to that?

Or…

Or…

Or…

So now it’s close to 6 a.m. The possibilities of my precious, uninterrupted time period were too much for me. I ended up hanging the laundry, drinking some Alka-Seltzer, cleaning up a gift the cat left for me, making coffee, and sitting at this computer checking stats and reading about how Michelle Obama thinks their new puppy, Bo, is “kind of crazy.” (To my credit and our country’s embarrassment, this story made headlines everywhere.)

Absolutely nothing is wrong with the way I just spent the last two hours. My activities were normal and necessary (except for the puppy news), and I have nothing to be embarrassed about. If I had added those items to the list of possibilities for what I could do this morning, I would feel like I had accomplished something. Instead, I feel as if I completely wasted my window of opportunity.

I faced two obstacles. All the items on my list were important, and all of them would have filled the relatively small chunk of time I had free. I had no way of prioritizing these random to do thoughts. They kept materializing like popcorn as I poured the coffee. And since I couldn’t choose, I did none of the above.

I have a great way of dealing with my work tasks, but I haven’t yet applied that system to tasks that don’t involve direct revenue generation. For work, I write a to do list each day, on real paper. All the upcoming tasks I have for each client are listed, and those that are due today (or in the immediate future) receive a swipe of a yellow highlighter. That notepad stays directly in front of my keyboard all day, and my close of business doesn’t happen until all the yellow line items are gone.

But I don’t have such a list for my other hopes and dreams. I’m still trying to find direction with the book ideas. I still haven’t figured out how I want to brand myself in social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). I’m revamping Avenue Z Toolbox, so I’m not going to pour a lot of effort into building traffic until I have the new look (coming soon!). Until I truly embrace a plan for my future endeavors, I fear I’ll keep shuffling in place instead of moving forward when I have a precious window of free time.

Oh well. Perhaps more coffee will help.