Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my workload, priorities, and the future. I’ve come to realize that I have spread myself too thin. Between a full-time job at Kelsey, running 2BigFeet.com, writing the SitePoint Tribune newsletter, speaking engagements, and most importantly my family, I realized I’ve really overextended myself.

But what do you do when you really love everything that you’ve committed yourself to do? How do you choose what to give up when everything that you’re doing is in line with your career goals?

I’ve been struggling with this for a few months now, and I don’t really have an answer. I don’t really want to give up any of the things I’m doing, but I need more time with my family and more time for myself.

So for the next few months, I’m going to try something new. I’m the work on being more productive, and I’m not cut out everything in my life that doesn’t help me reach the goals I’ve set for myself. No TV, movies, video games (not that I was into gaming anyway), or other distractions. I’m going to really focus on the things that are important to me, and try to forget about things that don’t really matter. In 10 years, I won’t miss the TV show I never watched or the time I didn’t spend on Facebook or Twitter…

I’m not going to ignore my family or friends. I want to spend time with my them, but will try to make them productive activities. For instance, instead of watching a movie or TV show with the kids, we can all go outside and work in the yard together. That way we spend quality time together, and also get things done around the house, killing two birds with one stone.

So as of right now, I’m cutting out all television, movies, games (not that I played many anyway), and general web surfing and social media. I’ll still check into Twitter and Facebook once or twice a day but it will be to just manage my account, post something, then get off.

I’m going to limit my meetups and association meetings too – for the forseeable future I’m only going to meetings where I am the speaker. It takes a considerable amount of time between the travel, the meetup itself, and the mingling afterward. I could be spending that time working on projects or with my family.

I’ll also be limiting email to checking 3 or 4 times a day, at set intervals. If you happen to email me or message me on a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter and I don’t respond, pick up the phone and give me a call.

Like Gary Vaynerchuk also said recently, I feel like I’ve lost my focus… like I’ve said “yes” to too many things. Before I start saying “no” to anything, I need to take a step back from all of the things I know aren’t priorities in my life.

We’ll see how it goes over the next few months. With a busy speaking schedule, and even busier list of projects at Kelsey, it’ll be a interesting experiment.