Time Management ~ How to Balance

[Cypress]

I think a lot about reorganizing everyday activities. I find I want to do more but have become very comfortable letting the established patterns prevail. For some background, I am single, mid 50s, own a small house with a large yard and two cats. My salary is about $40k now. I commute 45 minutes each way to work. I am never satisfied with how the yard looks or can decide what I want it to look like. I love to cook, read, tidy my house, and many basic chores. I think I am fairly well organized and try to plan shopping or errands in loops for shorter time and routes to get things done. For instance, after work today, I'll stop at the farm stand on the way out of the city and get fresh corn. My destination is a local PYO blueberry farm. After the picking which I love to do, I head home. Everything is basically on the way home. So, that I do well. But I get home at 6:30, get dinner going, chill out with a TV program and at 8 pm I don't know what, maybe a little reading and than to bed. I like to turn in early. I do well on 8 - 9 hours of rest each night.

It's things like I am writing a book about my adventure this year to Sicily. I continue a home study Italian language course. I am planning to go back to night school in September. The course is on-line. My employer agreed to support tuition if I successfully complete the course. That's a $1500 bonus! I only give these things a few minutes at a time or cannot find time to do them. These activities need concentration and time. I have a fantasy almost about sorting out the when and how to do things. Not in a mechanical, sequential, strict manner, but how to enjoy all the things I do and not dawdle over dishwashing which seems to be a perpetual day and night chore no matter what. I keep longing to go in the yard and watch it from the kitchen window.

Has anyone successfully reorganized the how and when of daily life? As I say, almost everything has a ritual feel to it, from dawn to dusk.

[mschrisgo2]

I have found over the years that being away from home for a few days gives me a different perspective when I get home, making it easier to change routines. I think because I had already made the first few days of stepping out of the routines, that it was easier to continue on a new path once I got home. One time I stayed at a sleep little inn where breakfast was served on the deck, and then the gardens naturally called me, then the town beyond, and then I was off for a whole day of exploring, leaving behind any preconceived ideas of what I would do that day.

[SteveinMN]

mschrisgo makes an excellent point in disrupting the routine to gain a fresh perspective. That might also give you time to determine what truly are your priorities -- and if you have any time restrictions such as a better mind for learning Italian early in the day or just before bed or ... whatever. If completing the course is important, maybe it's worth scheduling time with yourself, the same way you would schedule work or a doctor's appointment -- you're just not available to do anything else during those times. If that means rushing a little with the dinner dishes, so be it. Or if classwork means you don't have as much free time for the next n months, well, that's what you chose to do. At least you're honoring your true priorities.

[freshstart]

could you try flextime at work? maybe 4 ten hour days thus giving you an "extra" day at home?

we went through this thing at work where you wrote down exactly what you did for the last 15 mins (which took 5 mins to do every 15 mins so this was the stupidest productivity study I ever participated in!), but it found "holes" in our day allegedly during which one could be more productive. Whatev, work productivity was not an issue for me. But I modified this at home to 4 hr blocks instead of 15 mins. Because I was a single mom, working full time, tired and even if I could keep all the balls in the air, I didn't really care anymore. Like you, by 8 or 9, I was done. Looked at the log after a week and picked out the least "important" things that contributed to feeling like I wasn't present enough for my kids and those things that left me "tired" and not rewarding.

Looking at it, I was amazed how little time was actually "free" for the kids or even for myself. So I picked those least favorite things and tried to figure out a way to make them easier. Cleaning and organizing the house was the worst, I was spending big chunks of time nearly everyday yet felt I was chasing my tail. I found a woman who whipped through the cleaning for $30 twice a month, cable was going before that $60 ever was! Her coming made everyone be more organized. I told the kids how incredibly fortunate we were to have her, if they left toys out or their rooms were so bad they could not easily be cleaned, the clutter would be "disappeared" by me for two weeks and we would go back to cleaning our own house, all 3 of us, not just me. Everyone became responsible for their own laundry, for some reason, I didn't get push back on this, I think they liked pushing buttons, lol.

Last was meals, I detest cooking, I am not good at it, if we didn't eat the exact 3 things they liked, they balked at new stuff. We ate out way too much and relied on frozen convenience items way too much. This never got all the way fixed, I did try to get all groceries on sale and stockpile but creating new menus and cooking healthier, I'd say I failed. But even failing pointed out time sucks spent on things I hated. I still had to do this stuff but had the awareness that my kids were unlikely to accept a bunch of new recipes, (they did do a few) so I did not waste time trying to do an entire overhaul, accepted we were going to continue to eat chicken breasts A LOT and eat out and while not ideal, it worked for that point in my life.

doing this quickly identified my priorities and got me brainstorming on how to live a life more in line with what I said I wanted. Maybe keeping a log will show you where the time and energy sucks are and what is most important to you. Then you have on paper where you can think about making changes. Good luck, sounds like an interesting book!