Time Management Tuesday ~ Tending the Garden

One of the recommendations in Laura Vanderkam's book, Off the Clock, is to "tend your garden"—that is, once you've tracked your time, spend some time analyzing it. The questions she suggests asking are:

• What do I like about my schedule? I like that I have summer/fall off work and mostly control my time in that interim.
• What would I like to spend more time doing? Writing (I really can't manage to prioritize this enough); making art; nature study; reading. 
• What would I like to spend less time doing? Driving around, running errands, shopping; reading, deleting, responding to emails; nagging kids.
• How can I make that happen? Continue to prioritize writing; improve my focus when doing the work I want to do; set aside specific blocks of time for each thing I want to do; unsubscribe from email lists; set a time for email and ignore it the rest of the time.

She also recommends envisioning a "realistic ideal day." (Note the key word "realistic. No sitting in a lavender field in Provence reading E.M. Forster, exploring the ruins of Petra in Jordan, or snorkeling a coral reef allowed). Sometimes my ideal day entails a hike with a friend, shopping with my mother-in-law, or lunch with a writing buddy. Most the time it means staying home (alone—enough of this early release, three-day-weekend, snow-day nonsense!), and it involves getting outside in nature, writing, reading, making (this includes knitting, sewing, painting, drawing, or other project—but not cooking, because that is a chore and not fun). I don't get all of these in every day, but as long as my week includes a litte of everything sprinkled around, I'm content.

The real question is how will I fit in the things I want when I'm back to working full time next month?

• Spend the 1/3 hour between dropping kids off at bus and work plus two 15-minute breaks for walking outside (no matter how bad the weather is; dress warmly).
• Spend lunch hour walking or writing.
• Listen to audio books on commute (reading is hard b/c of work-caused eye strain).
• Run errands one lunch break and one after-work per week and no more.
• Knit during evening family TV time.
• Go to bed early.
• Make art and spend time in nature and write more on weekends.

Well, that doesn't sound much different from how last year went. And it sounds pretty depressing. I'm not sure I'm fully on board with Vanderkam's cheerful assessment that every week has 168 hours! Sure that's empirically true, but subtract 56 for sleeping, 40 for work, 5 for commuting, 14 for eating, 14 for getting ready to go to work and to go to bed, 14 for quality time with your family, 10 for housework, 7 for cooking, and 4 for exercise, that leaves a little over half an hour per day for things you want to do.