Admittedly, I haven’t done one in a while, but in retrospect these tips are very helpful.

This is a great post: http://willprice.blogspot.com/2007/10/burn-boats.html

I spent four hours on Thursday with Jerry at his new pre-school, Nadeshiko Kids, which is run out of the home of our former mid-wife. Jerry consistently put toys in his mouth - which resulted in the toys being gently removed and washed. Sachiko recommend that we consider giving Jerry a pacifier so that he can fulfill his need to chew and learn that the toys themselves are not appropriate for chewing on.

As I continue to adjust to life as a married man, as a father, and as an employee with signficant responsibility (all of which have happened in the last two years) I find myself slowly making peace with the new definition of “my time.”

In light of my recent realization, I’ve set some new, reasonable goals for myself:

• maximize play-time with Jerry
• one new Kanji per week
• one hour of dedicated exercise per month
• one book per month

Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

• Samuel Smiles

I find myself often engaged in thought, creating a blog entry in my head - far more often than not, that entry never sees the light of day. When I discover how to turn thoughts into actions, I will be SO much more productive…

Which brings me to another topic I’ve been thinking quite a bit about lately (or on and off for the last 5 years, if you check out the history…) - how to make more time for the things I consider important. As I become more aware of my own actions and how certain choices lead to others, I am starting to narrow in on the simple fact that I haven’t clearly defined what is important. There is a long litany of items that I “want” to do, or “need” to do, and I end up making time for little of them and feeling frustrated by it - because there are simply too many.

This has been a bad week for sleeping. Jerry had a fever last weekend, so he didn’t sleep well on Saturday night. That led to Eriko and I sleeping poorly and being a little short with each other. I had Jerry for the day, so he had lots of time to share his cold with me.

Then comes Sunday night - Jerry couldn’t sleep well and neither could I. I spent most of the night holding him in one position or another and probably got about 2 hours of sleep, at best. There has only been one night this week where I had 6 hours of sleep (and they weren’t interrupted, of course.) The average has probably been more like 4.