Do you fritter your time away?  Do you complain that with full-time work, kids, household chores, and the jillion other things on your to do list, you have no time to pursue your real dream, like starting that dot-com or writing the great American novel?  I used to complain a lot about the lack of time, until I realized that successful people find the time to achieve their goals.  I recently read a magazine article profiling the best-selling author David Baldacci.  Before he became a famous novelist, Baldacci was a trial attorney working long hours at a D.C. law firm.  However, at the same time, Baldacci was also penning his first novel, Absolute Power.  Baldacci would spend time writing from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. after a full day at the office.  I find Baldacci’s commitment to his writing incredible, given the grueling hours that he had to put in at the office.  This unwavering focus on writing paid off, when a publishing house snapped up Baldacci’s first novel, while he was still working his day job.

Baldacci is just one example of successful people that don’t let a perceived lack of time get in their way.  But believe it or not, most people don’t take advantage of the 24 hours that they and everyone else on this earth have.  A relative of mine set me straight one day when I was complaining about the lack of time to do this, do that etc.  He said to me, ”how much time do you waste watching TV?”  I had to admit, plenty of time.  I also looked around at other people I know who want to accomplish this and do that, but also whine about ”no time!”  These are the same people talking about what happened on American Idol last night and how many DVDs from Netflix they were able to cram into one month.

So, to ditch the complaining and start making progress on my goals, I’ve decided to compose a short list of my resolutions to make better use of my time.

• Limit junk TV watching to three hours a week.  What I mean by junk is programming that has no newsworthy content and is pure entertainment.  I’ll probably use this allotment for times where I’ve come home from work and my brain is so fried that I really cannot work on anything else.
•  Limit Internet surfing to 30 minutes a day.  This does not include research that I am doing for this blog and for my start-up business.
• Stop procrastinating on less-than-desirable tasks and just DO IT.  I’ve found that sometimes I spend so much time justifying my procrastination that I could have used that time to finish the task! 
• Set specific deadlines for accomplishing your goals.  While “straddling” - keeping your day job while starting up your business - affords you a safety net, the downside of keeping a regular job while you are starting up your business is that there is no sense of urgency to get things done.

 I’m going to apply these resolutions to my life and see how far I get by the end of this month.  Do you have any suggestions to add to this list?