Do you know what a typical work day is for me?

I usually wake between 9 and 9:30. That may seem late to some, but stay with me. I'll then spend most of the next 18 hours or so at my computer, doing something. I might be writing or researching or creating something. Almost everything I do, I do at the computer. And therefore, often, I'm getting to bed between 3 and 3:30 in the morning; this past weekend, I went to bed at 5AM Saturday morning.

I also take in all my entertainment from the computer. In the evenings I turn on the TV and I watch TV while I finally get to most of my business email. And I have a lot of it to get to; luckily, I read fast. I play online poker, free of course, and while I'm playing, I'm writing. You might think I should just be concentrating on my poker playing, but the truth is that the best thing for me in playing poker is when I get to talk to people at the table when I'm at the casino. At home, it's just something to slightly distract me while I'm working. I also listen to all my music from the computer, which is pretty sad since I have my stereo system here in the room with me, including a DVD player and expensive speakers. Overall, I like the convenience of having everything at hand, whereas, with the stereo, at some point I have to get up from the desk; it's not lazy, it's not wanting to take much more time away from what I'm doing.

Because of how I am, I have to plan when and how I eat. I don't mean just saying I'm going to eat something at noon. I have to actually book the time to eat, or set the alarm on my watch to go off at certain times. I don't eat when I first wake up; sometimes it can be 3 or 4 hours before I eat, which I need to change. After that, because I'm diabetic, I try to eat every 2 1/2 to 3 hours, small meals, to help control my glucose levels. When I'm not eating like that, I definitely go astray, and my body pays for it.

So, I can easily say that I work hard. What I can't say is that I'm working smart. I don't think I'm working all that smart at all, and that's not good. Like many other people, I need to plan break times also. I was doing that for awhile, and I need to get back to it. The thing is, when I was working a traditional job, I never took breaks, and had to eventually learn how to at least eat lunch. I also had to learn how to take vacations when I was working; at this point, I haven't gone away on a vacation in more than 10 years, and the last vacation time I took was in 2001.

I ask this question again; how hard to you work? And, if you're a manager, how hard do you make your employees work? I'd like some sharing with this one; maybe we'll figure out how to improve our quality of life together.