Part of getting a better sense of how I use my time thinking about how I categorize my time.

Initially I used the Virginia guidelines on for how ITRTs use their time. I then added a few of my own categories. Over the past few weeks I’ve added two more.

• Technical-Secretary: For example, one week I spent almost an hour updating room use calendars in Outlook.
• Equipment-Management: Today I’ve spent about 25 minutes setting up computers for new students (printing out labels, assigning them in the database, that sort of thing)

I’ve also split the instructional category into two parts. It made looking through the data easier.

• Instructional: Working and planning with teachers, researching new technology, designing new processes and programs for our school (70% or 27 hours a week)
• Instructional-Classroom: Modeling and co-teaching in the classroom setting.

Yesterday my day looked like this.

I’ve been tracking my time over the past few weeks and one trend I see is that I spend way to much time on email.

So I searched around on how to get a handle and I saw a few trends.

David Allen of GTD fame suggests a 4 prong approach. Delete. File what you can file. Anything you can do in just 2 minutes, just do it. If it is a longer project, get out of your email and into a system of managing your todo lists.

Tim Ferriss suggests limiting your mail checking to twice a day.

So combining these together I am now.

1. Checking my email at 7:30 when I arrive. I process my email until anything actionable is in my todo system in Airtable. Anything that I need to keep a record of goes into OneNote. I respond to whatever needs responding. I only leave emails in my inbox that I am expecting a response from that day.
2. I then close Outlook and look at my Todo system.
3. Around 12:00, while I am eating lunch I reopen Outlook and reprocess my email.

And that is sort of it. I’ll also sometimes go in at the end of the day as well.

And I am not perfect, I still sneak peeks sometime. But it does not seems to be a good strategy, so I am trying to limit it.

Thus is not about school, tech, or my job. This is thoughts about food.

I have a dysfunctional relationship with food. The outward display of that dysfunction is that I’ve been overweight most of my life and obese for most of my adult life. But that stems from an internal dysfunction around food. That dysfunction has many levels.

One level is as an American. 40% of Adults in America are obese. If you include overweight Americans in that, it jumps up to around 60-70% are overweight or obese. Being fat is the default position in America. That is a pretty clear indication that there is a systemic, nationwide issue with fat in America. There are issues of culture and policy that tip the scales of American’s collective levels of fat. Other countries do not have the same issues around obesity, though other countries may have other national problem. That national dysfunction would be enough to ensure me being overweight and obese.

However, this is about me. I have my own issues. I use food to gloss over a number of emotional issues.

I sooth my emotions through food. On bad days my brain wants to sooth itself with food. I had a bad day at work and I instinctively wanted to buy a milkshake. I caught myself and realized what I was doing. But my next choice was to think about buying pizza instead. It is something I am constantly working on.

I’ve gotten better at it, but I keep learning about additional layers. On bad days I don’t stop by Starbucks and drink and eat 800 calories of self -soothing, but I’ll stop by the grocery store to get a 12 pack of diet soda. Calorie-wise it is a better choice (though health-wise it may not be), but I realize the intent is the same. I’m still soothing my emotions through food.

There is more, but this is the one that is most clear in my head. I’m still working on the rest.

This weight loss journey I’ve been on, at its heart, has to be one of self-understanding. I can lower my calories and lose fat. I can learn more about nutrition. I can exercise and make my body fit. Until I understand more about what is going on underneath the surface there will be no long term changes.