Warning: Work Day Schedule

After reading Jess and Shannon's blog about their work days, I figured I should post a little outline of how my day goes. This might help Ryan understand why I am exhausted most days and work more hours than a lot of people.

Arrive at work between 8 and 8:20 (LBF has changed my morning routine, takes me a little longer to feel confident I can leave the house without hurling all over myself in the car).

Ideally, I would love to check blogs, read email, and a little MSN for entertainment news but normally I come into 10-15 emails I received after I went to bed the night before. So, I instantly start checking my work email. This usually reveals a "problem" to investigate or starts a thread of work for the day.

By 9 or 9:30, I usually have a meeting scheduled. So from about that time until 5 or 6, I am booked with meetings. On lighter days, I have an hour or two to get some work done but most of the time I am multi-tasking between conference calls and answering emails or instant messages. The hours I have blocked off for work time are usually interrupted by a new priority, a co-worker who has a question, or another spur of the moment meeting.

The part I like about my job gets lost in the daily shuffle and I find myself rushing home to log back in to actually get some real work done. Luckily, I have a few people I have started delegating more work too but most of the time, it's all on my shoulders. Having my priorities shift minute by minute is quite stressful not to mention taxing when I have to make sure I gave the information to the people I am asking to do the work since I am stuck in yet another meeting.

Many of you may be wondering when I eat lunch. What lunch is my response to that question. Before LBF, I was a food lover that got up in the morning excited to think about what I was going to eat for lunch. Never getting a lunch break was getting really old but if I could work through that hour...that's one less hour I have to stay after 5 or 6pm. Now that I have LBF brewing, I need to eat every couple hours to keep the sickness at bay but I still just chow down on the phone, in a meeting, or while working on something at my desk. I have one drawer dedicated to 100 calorie snack packs and crystal light. Friday's I try to take a lunch hour and it definitely proves that that one hour I am normally productive in because I don't remember the last Friday I left before 6pm. I could easily stay until 7 or 8 to get things wrapped up.

Oh and don't forget I teach a class on top of this job. So, if I do have a spare minute, I log into my classroom to make sure I am up to date on my student's postings.

I would love to have structure like Jess or Shannon but then I probably would get bored. I think the grass is always greener on the other side but when I think about quitting work, I know I would be sad and longing to be back in the crazy office world.

So the question is, does anyone want to trade jobs with me? That's what I thought.