168 Hours: Time Management Book Review

I recently finished reading 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam, and I LOVED it.  It's the book I wish I had written, but also made me realize I probably will never be a serious author because I don't have the desire to spend THAT MUCH TIME researching and revising, which she clearly has done.  The writing is really good - tons of research, easy to read and flows smoothly.   I read this in a day, and I don't (can't) usually do this with nonfiction.

If you're into time management and productivity stuff, it's worth a read.  If you feel stressed out and like you never get to do the things you want, this book is for you.

The concept of a week being 168 hours isn't revolutionary, but I admit I never thought about it like that.  I've kept a few days' worth of time diaries, but never a whole week.  (I'll do this when we return from vacation.)

Her advice is to keep a time diary for a week, and then review it to see WHAT you're spending time on.  Likely there's a lot of low-priority stuff on there, and from that, you can make changes to mindfully spend time on what YOU think is important.

I love the reframing of "I'm too busy to do x" as "x is not a priority for me".  I don't think we use that enough in our daily lives.  We fill up our time with tasks that we *think* need to be done, but in the grand scheme of things, maybe not.  Or maybe not by us.

There are real-life examples of interesting (and relatable) people.  I will say that in many places it seems to target a certain upper middle class income range, which may be off-putting to some people.  But I liked that focus, because it spent a fair amount of time discussing how you can deploy your financial resources to help you "find" more time - sending out your laundry (which alas, I cannot find anyone to do in my town), hiring housecleaners or a personal chef, etc. 

One quibble I had with this book is the definite bias against parents who give up or significantly downshift their careers.   It came up in a few different places and made me a bit grumbly.  Yes, I totally agree with her when she says it's hard to have a capital-C Career if you work less than 30 hours a week. 

But she tends to brush off the idea that some people *want* that.  Her argument came across like she thinks the only reason people quit jobs or go part-time is because they want to spend more time with their kids, and then proceeds to point out that you can squeeze in 40-45 hours of work easily in a week and still have plenty of time for kids.

From a pure time perspective, yes, this is true.  But speaking from experience, there are other reasons people choose to reduce their career aspirations when they have kids.  In our case (and for many others I know) it's because we want to limit (or not use) hours of outside childcare.  I personally wanted to experience as much of my daughter's early years as I could- the good, the gross, and the boring.  I also wanted a life that *felt* more relaxed, hence my 2.5 day work week.  

Maybe this is turning into a bit of a "but what about me?" argument, but it bugged me repeatedly.  I've started reading her new book All the Money in the World, and I think there's a little more latitude there for people who might enjoy things like baking, keeping house, etc. as a pursuit in itself.

This is another book I'd like to keep around to get a 'refresher' when things feel like they're getting crazy or I'm losing sight of what's important.  I highly recommend it.  Go get it now!
:)

Revisiting the List and the Awesomeness of the Universe

I've been meaning to revisit my Mondo Beyondo List of dreams to see what's happened since I wrote it up.  Also, I'm sure some of the things I wrote down are no longer things I'm interested in.  So here's a little progress update on the awesomeness of the Universe.

T holding a part of the Universe

• Live in a nice house in Dublin (Ireland), with our dogs

Well, sort of.  We're going on vacation to Ireland for 3 weeks, sans dogs, unfortunately.  But we should see if we like it first, right?

• Expand our house to have a separate room for Trillian to do school work, a bigger craft room for me, a luxurious soaking tub, a welding/torch space for me and TJ, enough storage for everything

I'll probably have to break this one down into parts, but after vacation we're going to call someone for an estimate on how we can expand our house to get the craft room, a guest room and some storage. 

• Go through our house top to bottom and organize it. Get rid of everything we don't need or use or love.

In progress.  Anyone need an old XBOX/DDR pad?  How about a 20 year old subwoofer?

• Organize *all* my email Inboxes and be able to keep up

After reading Laura Vanderkam's 168 Hours, I'm not sure this is a priority, except at work.  So GMail will likely be delightfully overflowing for a while.

• Organize all of our photos. Make albums.

Making progress.  I'm about halfway through 2010 and 2011.  Sigh.  But getting there!

• Have just a few really sharp high quality knives (instead of a ton of dull ones)

Done!!  We "donated" all of our extra knives and the knife block that was taking up space to my parents' place here which is an improvement for both of us.  Now we have about 6 knives that we use *all the time* on a magnetic wall rack.  I can't tell you how happy this makes me.  Weird, huh?

Spend 3-4 weeks per year traveling somewhere interesting

In a week, we'll be leaving for Ireland.  Dream vacation, since I was a kid.  Woot!

• Spend one weekend in a (local) fancy hotel all by myself.

Done, Mama Weekend Away was a big success in January!

• Minimize commitments and stay home, but still have some time to myself during the week

Work in progress.  Writing this one down made me do better at looking at our calendar as a whole, so that I don't overcommit us.  Life has been a lot more chill.  I also stopped taking custom orders in my Etsy shop and stopped wasting time on Facebook and both of those has done wonders for my stress level and available time.

• Make money on blogging, papercrafting, other projects @ home

Not much to speak of here, but I am making *tiny* money on my blog again.  Enough to pay for the domain name, and maybe a Starbucks chai or two.  That's progress though.

• Stop having that panicky stressed feeling most of the time

Done.  Not sure exactly how, but we worked this out and life is good.

• Stop focusing/worrying about money

Also done.  Much more zen about money, which is good since we're down to 0.65 of an income :)

• Help people get what they want out of work-life balance. Be a great example.

Not sure if I'm achieving anything here but I've talked to several people at work interested in working part-time or on a flexible schedule.  I may also be interviewed (anonymously) for a work-life balance article in the next week (not sure of the publication).

• Get cards or papercrafts published in a magazine

Well, not quite papercrafty, but my Hooray necklace is going to be featured in the June 2012 issue of Bead Trends magazine, also run by the Cards Magazine people.  It's a baby step, right?

• Learn to take great photos and document our lives

I started Project Life this year and am nearly "caught up".  At least we're in the same month I left off.  I'm loving this exercise because not only does it "force" me to do a little craftiness every week, but it also reminds me to take pictures of us hanging out, even if we're not doing anything particularly special. 

• Enjoy my marriage to the fullest
• Stop keeping score

These are related, and again, a work in progress.  But life is good.

• Send T to the best school for her, regardless of cost

The new preschool is working out well despite my propensity to worry about things that don't really matter.  She is so excited to go there, and her teachers are excited and happy to see her.  What more can I ask?

• *Want* to live a healthy life and eat right, exercise etc. Not have it be a chore.

I wish I could check this off and say "Done!", but I can't.  However, my mindset is different.  It's not a chore.  Eating right is a gift to myself and when I'm mindful about it, it's easy.  But I still have to work hard at it.  I suspect I always will.

• Speak fluent Spanish

We're nowhere near fluent, but T and I are enjoying our Spanish class together.  She got to practice at a local Mexican restaurant, where our waiter was thrilled to find out she knows a few words of Spanish.  She loved it too!

• Have a quail parade of awesome kids

Maybe not quite a quail parade yet, but we're awaiting the arrival of Baby X' (read as Baby X Prime) in October.  Or, as T will tell you "my mama has a baby in her tummy!".  Woot!  Sometimes the Universe really does have its own plan!

Following our dreams

It appears that the Mondo Beyondo magic is rubbing off on our household.  (And of course this was my intention!)

My fabulous husband gave notice at his job, so his last day is Friday.  He doesn't have another offer lined up, or a detailed plan.  In his words, he's "borrowing 2 years of retirement". 

my two favorite people

I should be freaking out, right?  ZOMG, primary breadwinner quit his job.  How will I afford my Starbucks on my days of "leisure" that I'm not at my part-time job? 

But I'm not stressing.  In fact, I've been encouraging him to do it for a while.  I'm of the opinion that if you're not happy, then you need to make a change.  If you can't change your job to make you happy, then maybe you need a new one.  Or some time off. 

I don't subscribe to the "work until you're 62.5 and then sigh in relief when you retire" philosophy.   62.5 is a long way off, and that's a long time to toil in a job you dislike.   What about finding a career that you *like* and maybe doing it past the standard retirement age?  Or try out a few different career paths?  Life is all about exploration, yo.

Of course,  we'll be adjusting our lifestyle a bit.   Our next Canlis dinner may be a long time from now.  And I'll probably be making my iced soy chai at home, since it doesn't require any fancy equipment.   I increased *my* hours at work to 25, which isn't much of a stretch since T's now in preschool 3 days, and I have the option to go back full time as needed.

But dude, I am *so* looking forward to trips to the zoo mid-week.  And trading off toddler-care when it gets crazy up in here. And maybe restarting custom orders in my Etsy shop if I can convince the Mister to handle all the administrative stuff, so our throughput can be higher.

Hooray for being brave!

Eating like a grownup

TJ and I went to Canlis on Friday, and it was the perfect end to a rough week.  BabyT had been sick and both of us a little stir-crazy to be home.  I also got whatever ick she had, and I've gotten worse this weekend.  But I sure am glad we kept our dinner reservation.

We pretty much had an Early Bird Special reservation because that was all that was left for 2 weeks' notice.  A Canlis dinner is usually at least 3 hours for us, so it's not something we can attempt easily on a school night.  

Turns out the advantage of a before 6pm reservation is pretty great.  We got quite possibly the most awesome table in the entire place - right by the window, and we were facing each other, rather than sitting on the same side of the table which is typical for a lot of the 2 person tables.  It was a gorgeous clear day so we could look out over the city and also watch it get dark.   We weren't exhausted by the end of dinner (we've had a few 9pm reservations where we could barely stay awake by the end...).

I got the vegetarian tasting menu, which is always interesting.  This was a mango, avocado and cucumber salad.  With lime gel.  It reminded me of a Dr. Seuss drawing but it was YUMMY.

I'm much more willing to experiment with a veggie meal than a meat meal.  TJ got his usual favorites - the Canlis salad, and a couple more courses involving steak.  (What else?)

We didn't have to remind each other to use our "restaurant voice" or "sit facing forward please".  I didn't have to dig frantically for crayons to keep my dining partner amused until the food showed up.  It was blissful.  We decided we should do this more often. (We do every time, and then fail to keep the resolution of not eating crappy meals out at other places in order to keep Canlis money in the budget.)

And then we went back to our regularly scheduled normal life.

Something weird is going on with T's nap situation and if we weren't going on vacation to a completely different timezone in a week, I'd try to figure it out.  3 days this week (at home) she didn't nap at all.  But they say she does nap at preschool, though it's only about an hour or so.  It's probably related to being sick but I'm not sure.  On the nights she doesn't nap, we put her down for bed around 6 and she's out like a light until after 7 the next day, so clearly she still needs the sleep.  I guess the universe likes to keep us guessing.

I did get a giggle out of the fact that one non-napping day when I went in to get her after her not-so-Quiet-Time, she had taken off her socks and pants and was bouncing on the mattress.  Thankfully she did leave her diaper on. (Hooray for small blessings.)

Now I must leave you and get some sleep.  It's possible I'll fall asleep before BabyT, who is in her crib repeating the names of her preschool classmates.  I guess I should be glad she knows some of their names now, right?

We (heart) Google Calendar

Even before we had BabyT, we realized we had a need for a shared calendar so that we could add family birthdays, upcoming travel, concerts and sporting events for which we had tickets, and anything else we needed the other person to know about.  Like TJ's motorcycle track days/weekends, or my girls' nights out.

With the arrival of BabyT, that became even more important since we had to track all my prenatal doctors' appointments, and then the million appointments for BabyT in her first year, not to mention her physical therapy, allergist appointments, and all of those enrichment classes I signed her up for.

Super cute calendar from milk and cookies on Flickr

After bouncing around a bunch of different solutions, we're using Google Calendar for shared family stuff.  We started with Windows Live Calendar when I had a Windows Phone, because it synced the best.  TJ had an Android phone app that would allow him to view our Windows Live Calendar.  That worked fine, but was a bit of a hassle for me to get to online since I rarely log into my Hotmail account.

I played with Cosi for a while, but it was more complicated than we needed.

But once I switched to my new fancy Android phone, I figured we should just switch over completely to Google Calendar.  TJ was using it for some of his own personal calendars, and I set one up for our Toddler Group.  I'm nearly always logged into my Gmail, which has a convenient "Calendar" link right at the top of the page. 

Functionally, the Windows Live and Google Calendars are pretty similar.  They let you set up a bunch of different calendars under the same account and you can hide/show them as needed.

I can display either of them in my Outlook calendar at work but keep the appointments separated.  Unfortunately, Outlook doesn't let me edit my Google calendar, which is a bummer, but I can live with editing online or on my phone. Interestingly, my Windows Phone let me edit my Google Calendar just fine, so props to them for making it interoperable.

We have a shared calendar for family stuff:  all of Trillian's appointments, social outings that involve one parent being out and thus another to cover, trips, our Seahawks football tickets, and concerts.  We have another one for family birthdays. 

I also have one for my "routine" tasks, like monthly housekeeping/errandy-type stuff, to remind me to do stuff like swap out my disposable contacts or process photos for the week.

Most of the appointments are set to send an email reminder. I set up text message reminders but it got too crazy.  I love that we can both access the calendar on our phones or on our computers.  We don't use a paper calendar at all.

TJ points out every now and then that we *do* actually have to talk about the items.  Sometimes I'll put something on the calendar, and expect him to see it and forget that we never actually discussed it.  In general, I guess it's good for married people to you know, actually TALK to each other.

It's not perfect, but it's working for us.  What do you use?