Off at a Tangent

Do you ever start the day with a 'to do' list, only to find at the end of it, you haven't even accomplished the first task?

I'm sure mothers will identify with this phenomenon--little people can throw your plans out of whack without even trying--but in a professional sense, this happens most often to me on the internet. All those diverging paths--links, comments, interesting points to google, words to look up on etymonline (ok, that's just me, not many people care that much!) And this is all publishing or writing-related. I'm not even talking about fun stuff.

For instance, this morning I came to do a blog post (I forget what it was about now, but no doubt it was hugely entertaining) and the question popped up--Do you want to customize your blog? Hmm, I thought. I just had a new publicity photo done. Oh, and there's that gorgeous Romance Bandits logo that I'd like to add. Oh, and I've had my website refurbished so the blog could do with one, too...

And before I knew it, I was upgrading my blog and fiddling with templates, fonts, pictures and colours.

Sadly, and much to my webmistress's torment, I'm the sort of person who knows what they like when they see it, but can't envision the result before it's done. This means it takes me a loooong time to decide on a colour scheme. And of course, you can't change all the things you want to in a blogger template. I ended up going for a fairly simple variation. People think I'm conservative. I think I'm just indecisive.

So something that was supposed to take twenty minutes ended up taking 2 hours (in between various household chores). Lucky I got up at 4.30am.

What are your big time-wasters--internet or otherwise? Or are you one of those superwomen who accomplishes everything she sets out to achieve? And if you are, would you like to share some hints on how you do it?