If time is money, it explains why I don’t have enough of it. Money, that is: I never seem to have enough time!
Friday (was that only yesterday?) I was reduced to spending the entire day cleaning house, having let the pigpen slide way, way too long. Dedicating a six or eight hours to dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing, and scouring gives you some time to think, and what I thought is that too much of my time has been wasted on the playground that is the Web and too little of it is used in any actively constructive way.
Not that I don’t spend plenty of time working…commenters will occasionally remark that I seem to work like an animal, and indeed, 14+ hours a day spent in front of a computer, haranguing students, driving from pillar to post, and thrashing around the Funny Farm does make for a tiring schedule. But, as I’ve observed before, I don’t think I’m working very smart. My work pattern is gestalt. Instead of focusing on specific, financially productive activities for specific periods, I’m all over the place: cruising the Web and writing and grading papers or doing course prep and editing copy and checking facts, all the while jumping in and out of the e-mail. Every day about 100 messages a day pour into just one of the four mailboxes that serve me, Funny about Money, and The Copyeditor’s Desk; I don’t have time to check all of them, but I do get pinged by my Mac.com mailbox frequently, all day and into the night. E-mail is one of the biggest time-killers known to Personkind, second only the the Internet playground itself!
One strategy I’ve used to organize time has been listing. This works pretty well: having a to-do list does seem to prod you to get those things done, if only because you get a tiny jolt of satisfaction each time you check one off. Lately, though, the lists seem to get longer and longer. They begin to look like this one from a day last week:
¨1. Move rose, plant bulbs
¨2. Write & print donor forms
¨3. Send ads to Nanette
¨4. Remind Marshall, Jim about SBA ad
¨5. Pick up house
¨6. Build a Mac.com “mailbox” for messages to deal with ASAP
¨7. Clean floors, counters, stove
¨8. Get in touch with Evan, others
¨9. Update student grades
10. Do laundry
11. Check CE Desk mail; cope
12. Order new business cards
13. Compose Time & Charges for PPP
14. Iron clothes
15. Figure out how to copy current 101 course to new BB site
16. Copy current 101 course to new BB site
17. Change at least half of 101 exercises & quizzes to noncredit assignments; figure out adjustment in grading scheme
18. Figure out new due dates for 2nd session 101 course; mesh with 235 assignment due dates
19. Rewrite syllabus accordingly
20. Post new syllabus, due dates, and learning modules
21. Finish editing current PPP novel; compose & print statement and report
22. Water plants
23. Finish planting garden
24. Buy food
25. Fix and eat food
26. Feed dog
27. Walk dog
28. Check rat traps
29. Fertilize citrus & palm
30. Clean, shock-treat pool
Crushing! The effect of a gawdawful list like this is to shut you down. It’s so huge and so discouraging, you don’t even want to start. You just want to avert your eyes and your mind from it.
Still…none of this stuff is disposable. It all has to be done. Maybe not today. But soon. What to do?
Another strategy is to build a daily schedule that will accommodate chores in focused periods. Rather than trying to accomplish a long and scattered list of tasks, such a scheme would bunch activities under various rubrics, scheduling similar chores during specific blocks of time. Here’s what I came up with:
The plan here is to build two new habits:
1. Limit e-mail to first thing in the morning and last thing in the afternoon, leaving the program turned off the rest of the day; and
2. Pick up the litter around the house every day, instead of putting it off until whenever I think I have time and feel like it.
😀 Of course, developing new good habits isn’t so easy as developing new bad habits (is the sun over the yardarm somewhere in the world, yet?).
The beauty of this schedule, if it can be made to work, is that it specifies blocks of time to market The Copyeditor’s Desk. Right now, the bulk of my income comes from teaching and Social Security: two tiny pittances combine to make one larger pittance. It’s enough to get by on—just—but not enough to live on comfortably. I’d like to build the business into a revenue generator, and the only way that’s going to happen is for me to get off my duff and network among business owners and executives who have budgets to pay for communication services and products.
The ugly of this schedule, however, is that it still prescribes 14 to 16 hours of work: we’re looking at something that starts around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and ends between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. However, that’s ameliorated a bit by the loafing time shown on the weekends. Not much, but better than nothing.
{sigh} If I’m going to work this hard, I’ve gotta have more to show for it than a $29,000 gross income!
Speaking of the which, it’s almost noon and I haven’t even started to read the papers that I was supposed to have done on Thursday. ’Bye!
Reading this put me into a panic. I can only imagine what it does to you. I have no good suggestions, since I have a time management problem too. I will say this: unless you enjoy ironing, give it up! Lowering your laundry and housekeeping standards may help also.
Finally–have you thought about doing once-a-week cooking or similar?
LOL! As a matter of fact, a day or two ago I came to the same conclusion about the ironing: exeunt the iron, pursued by a bear. Tossed all the hung-dry jeans in the dryer, too good effect. Didn’t work as well on the linen from J.Jill — that stuff needs less ironing if it’s allowed to hang dry and left that way.
In fact, I don’t mind ironing if I can set up the board in front of the TV or the computer with a good show on. But the problem is, I never have time to watch TV! So that leaves no time to iron, those being essentially the same activity.
The reason I had to spend all day Friday (and half the day Thursday, come to think about it) is that I have been letting the housekeeping go. I hadn’t cleaned in over a month. The kitchen floor was sticky and the rest of the floors were so dusty that walking barefoot would give me black feet. Really, the place was filthy. This also came about because when I have time to clean I’m too exhausted to push a vacuum around, and when I’m not dead exhausted I have more urgent things to do. I figure the solution to that problem is to pick up after myself on a regular basis — which means scheduling frequent times to do so — and then to keep up with the light housekeeping once a week.
I have in the past done enough cooking to cover a week or so. But first I don’t like leftovers much — I really prefer freshly prepared food. I’ve found I tend not to eat the stuff…I just get sick of stew, chili, burros, and curry. And second, the truth is I don’t have several hours on the weekend to fiddle with it. I can prepare a dinner on the grill in 15 minutes; probably wouldn’t take less than that to defrost a container of stew and fix a salad.
# 28. Check Rat Traps?
@ George Fedelski: Yup. Roof rats. Rat traps in the attic. Lovely.
@ funny Who’da thunk it. Roof rats in Phoenix?
@ George: The little fellows have been dancing on Phoenix rafters for years!
I was in Phoenix once, leaving on a jet plane.
It was 120 degrees and we were rolling and rolling and rolling.
I looked at my watch and it’s been 45 seconds and the aircraft hasn’t rotated yet..
I started praying.
@ George: Normally they close the airport when the temp reaches 120 degrees. When the air is that hot, there’s a risk that a plane will not achieve enough lift to get off the ground.
@ funny yea after all that rolling that 737 finally took off and I am still alive.
I’ll update you on my struggle with these Social Security people.
They are evil.
Rats? We have the stray mouse that wanders in and gets struck by the trap.
Mr. Dusty our GSD catches one when he whacks it with his paw.
Then he eats them.
Tell me what you teach again.
@ George: composition.
I’m definitely a huge proponent of making lists. If I have a list, it gives me something to be accountable for. Otherwise, I’ll often put things off or think that I can do them another day. Plus, there is great satisfaction that comes from crossing things off the list. That’s my favorite part!
@ Money Beagle: True: writing lists seems to motivate one to get through a mountain of work. Thirty projects, though, some of which are large and complicated, gets a bit daunting.
Mary Kay Ashe recommended writing your to-do list on the bathroom mirror in lipstick. That way, she reasoned, you couldn’t easily get away from it. She also recommended putting the task you least like to do — which, she suggested, for most people is cold-calling — at the top of the list, so that chore is not put off indefinitely.
I have lists just like yours and spend too much time mindlessly at the computer on my “off” days. The days when I’m supposed to be doing my husband’s accounting, our personal finances, tidying the house a bit. I am just not an attentive list doer. My boss is super organized, and told me I just need to make a list. Yeah, well I make a list and don’t get much done on it. I can’t even bring myself to make an Excel spreadsheet todo list, although it looks pretty. 🙂 I seem to have the best luck with keeping a timer in the kitchen (by the way, a computer run timer doesn’t seem to be as effective) set to go off every half hour. Then I tell myself I *must* clean house for half an hour before I get to do computer stuff. I really need to get back to doing the timer thing. I am amazed at how easily distracted I am once the 30 minute “clean the house” time comes up. I doubt 20 seconds passes before I feel the desire to get back to the computer. Agh. But if I can fight the urge, I actually get something done. Some days I am hating housework so badly that I only set it for 15 minutes.
I’ve given up planning my days. I work for an ISP and I am kind of on call if you know what I mean.
Each day is somewhat unpredictable.
I want to semi retire this year and that’s yet another story and I won’t bore you with that.
On the other paw I do have my to do lists on the weekends and I chip away at them.
It’s so dog dam hot out here in the summer that if it don’t get done by 9 am, it don’t get done.