I planned on Friday…actually on Thursday because I was feeling anxious about getting everything done before vacation. A few nights I wound up spending some hours on the twin bed in his room that will eventually be his. In other news: Just a brief (sort of) TBT scorecard for the past week… I was mostly in bed by 11 p.m., though the toddler’s wake-ups meant that often wasn’t enough. Kids do become more independent (even if they need to be driven everywhere under the sun.…) And then you’ll be able to exercise for longer, say on Saturday mornings while your pre-teen and teenage kids are all asleep until 10 a.m… It won’t be less busy next week or maybe even next year, but businesses often do become more self-sustaining. The good news is that life might open up at some point.

Trade off with your partner, practice the piano 20 minutes on Saturday and Sunday and then just do one weekday, maybe when you decided you didn’t need to do that last conference call. Or (gasp!) it can come from those sometimes low-value weekend family hours. If you’re working 44.8 hours per week you try working 43.8 hours per week and find the time there. Maybe one of the bigger pots of hours can yield just a little more space. But if you want to practice the piano, maybe you could find 3 20-minute slots during the week when that might be an option. Highly productive people often assume that they need to make something a daily habit, which is just not going to happen in a life where every minute is spoken for. I maintain that anything that happens three times a week is a habit.

I’d also aim small when trying to add things into a very busy life. As for community involvement and friends, if you are co-parenting with someone, you could trade off, so each of you gets one night “off.” The kids are still with a parent at night, but each grown-up has a few extra hours to pursue their own interests. Instead of thinking “I can either read to my kids or read for myself” maybe try reading to the kids five nights a week and taking the other two nights as an opportunity to add a few more minutes to your own weekly tallies. Yes, evenings are for family, but nothing has to happen every single night. One is to make sure to look at time over the whole of the week. If any of this sounds like your life, there are a few things to think about for finding time when there is no time. I received a note this week from a male reader in the same bind: growing business, multiple little kids, community involvement, and a general desire to read more books, exercise, and try other hobbies. When women lament this situation, they are often told that “no one can have it all!” But it’s not just a female concern. Pretty much everything is a high-value activity, and so everything has a high opportunity cost. There’s no magical pot of hours to be redistributed from low-value activities to high-value activities. Almost every hour is going to something they need or want to do: advancing in a full-time job, spending time with a young family, getting enough sleep, exercising, reading, often being involved in some community or faith-based activities. Giant blocks of time pass mindlessly (real quote: “Was I abducted?”)īut there are some folks whose lives are already meticulously planned. If you don’t know where the time is going now, how do you know if you’re changing the right thing? It’s the same as any business decision you want to work from good data.įor many people this process is revelatory. When people tell me they want to spend their time better, my first suggestion is always to figure out where the time is going now.

Timeplus com