Where does prayer fit in my life?

If I eat three meals a day, prayer fits into a brief time slot (half a minute, at most?) before each.

Before I go to sleep at night, prayer often fills in two to four minutes.

Many mornings I pray while I walk down and up our one-tenth-mile-on-the-hill driveway; call it five, maybe eight, minutes.

Otherwise I may pray in fits and starts, bits and pieces, through the day.

Rarely (as in, would I need all my thumbs to count?) do I do this:

“And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35).

Why did Jesus do that?

And why do I pray?