Time Management Tuesday ~ Mindsets and Algorithms

I finished Laura Vanderkam's book, Off the Clock, over the weekend (just in time to return it to the library three days late; how's that for time management?), and I have to say I'm hovering somewhere between skeptical and intrigued. The book isn't so much about actually managing your time as it is about changing your perceptions about time. I'll write about some of the strategies she suggests (in addition to the time tracker, which I wrote about here and here) and my efforts to implement them over the coming weeks. It turns out that my strategy of prioritizing my own work that I wrote about last week is also one Vanderkam recommends, so that makes me feel like I'm both on the right track of figuring this out for myself and that some of her other recommendations might work for me.

I know that mindsets (even unconscious ones) affect how much time you experience because I get so much more done on weekends when I'm working full time than I do when I'm literally off the clock—because those two days are the only time I have all week to play outside, do housework, complete projects, and spend time with my family and friends, I make use of every second. When I have all week relatively free, I tend to goof around a lot more on the weekends. Which is totally fine. I love having lazy-ish weekends. But is it really possible to consciously shift the way you perceive time, and as a result feel like you have more of it? We'll find out.

As far as this week's mindset goes, it's only Tuesday and I already feel like my time's compressed into a smaller container than usual. I happen to have a lot of appointments this week—car repairs, a dentist appointment, a meeting about a class I'm teaching, as well as fun things like lunches with friends. None of these fit together neatly on the schedule, so there's a lot of driving involved and, because we live so far out of town, I'm compelled to take care of all my errands while I'm out and about. Z is also still running cross country, so picking him up in the afternoons adds another hour of driving. At the same time lot of tasks for both my nonprofit orgs are also coming to a head.

I'm cognizant that this is nothing compared to a 40+ hour job outside the home, and that all those errands would have to be squeezed into lunch hours if I were working right now, so I'm grateful that I do have the time I have. But I had to break my rule about putting my own work first today, because urgent tasks were screaming louder than the important but amorphous work of thinking about an essay. I'm back to thinking if I could just get everything else done, I'll have time for my own work, knowing full well there's no such thing as done.

I do, however, have recommendations for spending less time goofing around on the internet, for anyone out there who feels like they want to cut back in that area. I took the Facebook app off my phone last January, so now going on that site requires the laborious work of logging on or turning on my computer, and as a result I don't spend much time there. To minimize the time I spend scrolling when I do go on Facebook or Instagram, which I like much better, I've instituted an algorithm of my own—I shut it off after seeing two of pictures of any of the following: dogs, cats, foamed milk on a latte. It only takes about 30 seconds, max, and then I'm free to go do something else.