I mull over time management some more

Retroactive clock-out from yesterday!

Long day yesterday, and I’ve already been up and busy for an hour this morning. Yesterday I went to another fabulous dance cardio class with Bright, and then we bought groceries, had lunch, and made food for the evening’s dinner party. In between I managed to finally finish the dozen eye pillows for The Art of Yoga Project, which I’d been meaning to make for months. Originally I was aiming for two dozen, but for some reason making this single dozen took a lot of energy. It might be that I cut all the inner casings and outer covers in two sessions. The rotary cutter is supposed to be better for my wrists than scissors, which it probably is, but it’s still painful when I’m doing that much cutting all at once. Maybe next time I should aim to do only half a dozen at once. I’m happy with how the pillows came out, though — I think they look very cheery! I asked the project to let me know how these pillows work out, and if the girls like them, I’ll make them some more when I have more time.

While doing yesterday’s morning pages I thought some more about my recent challenges with finding time to do everything, and I came up with some more conclusions. First, I’ve had a lot of traveling and family time this year (2010), and that’s really cut into my work hours. Tina was staying with us until the 6th, so I couldn’t begin work until the second week of the month. After she left I had one solid work week, which was when I started implementing the new organizational system. But then my youngest sister was still home from college, so the week after that I spent three days in San Jose hanging out with family. I love my family and spending time with them, but that requires a double transition: geographical (because I’m away from my work space), and emotional (negotiating the roles of being an adult and being a child). Plus, there’s all the down time of being on the road (it’s at least two hours round-trip, and last week I made that trip twice), and a lot more sitting-around time at my parents’ house. So being away always requires transition and catch-up time, and that makes it harder to focus on what I’m supposed to be doing.

Second, while my action lists help, I still have trouble prioritizing. I can do it when I’m in the right frame of mind; this is how my various project sheets end up filed neatly in order of suggested deadline. But on an hour-by-hour basis, it’s hard for me to remember that when I only have so many hours in the day, I have to pick and choose carefully what to work on. For example, I started the year with several outstanding craft projects that had pre-February deadlines. But much of my time this past week has gone to overhauling my supply storage (for which I’d set a February 28 deadline) — which is really important and helpful, yes, and even fun, but not urgent. And more to the point, messy storage annoys me and slows me down, but it doesn’t make me feel anxious and time-pressured, whereas incomplete craft projects do. So not prioritizing is as much a psychological burden as a logistical one. I’ve been frustrated this week because I’ve had to go out a lot, but I could have made a lot more of the little time windows I had if I’d spent them working on top-priority, more-urgent projects, rather than the supply reorganization. I’ve always had a hard time with prioritizing, so I suspect this will continue to be a challenge for some time. But if I want to keep being my own boss, this is something I’ve got to learn.

Another note on time management: Mo left a comment on my previous entry, sharing how consolidating her errands has helped her find more work time. This is something I’ve thought about a lot, too, but it never seems to work for me and I haven’t been able to figure out why. Let’s look over my past week and see what’s going on. I’ll include at-home “appointments” as well as errands and outings.

• Monday: AM – gym, supermarket, library. PM – singing lesson, mini artist date.
• Tuesday: PM – dance cardio, haircut, Crate & Barrel outlet.
• Wednesday: PM – Staples, Home Depot, Yin yoga.
• Thursday: out all day to South Bay – dentist, lunch and planning/shopping with Jinny, dinner with parents.
• Friday: AM – vet, home yoga practice.
• Saturday: PM – dance cardio, groceries, dinner party.

Gosh, that’s kind of crazy. I didn’t even realize I was doing all this! And the list doesn’t even indicate commute time. This means that all week, I have not had a single full work day, only time windows in between appointments. No wonder I feel like I don’t have time — probably I don’t! Could I have edited this week to give myself longer blocks of time? Let’s see.

[Feel free to skip this part. It is probably interesting only to me, and at that, only because it’s helping me think things out.]

I’ll mark unmoveable appointments with boldface, appointments that had to be that day but could have been at a different time with italics, and leave everything else in plain text.

 

• Monday: AM – gym, supermarket, library. PM – singing lesson, mini artist date.
• Tuesday: PM – dance cardio, haircut, Crate & Barrel outlet.
• Wednesday: PM – Staples, Home Depot, Yin yoga.
• Thursday: out all day to South Bay – dentist, lunch and planning/shopping with Jinny, dinner with parents.
• Friday: AM – vet, home yoga practice.
• Saturday: PM – dance cardio, groceries, dinner party.

 

 

Hmm… Monday I could have structured more of my day around the singing lesson. Why didn’t I? For one thing, I go to the gym with Erik. For another, I like to exercise as early in the day as possible, because I’ve found from experience that leaving exercise until later usually means I just don’t do it. I didn’t want to run errands before my singing lesson, because I was afraid they’d stretch out and make me late, and I couldn’t run errands after, because I’d hit traffic (which ended up happening anyway). Bah. Well, what about Tuesday? I did pack a lot of Berkeley errands into one trip, but I ran into traffic again on my way home. Wednesday I didn’t have to go out until the evening and then I combined errands too. Thursday was unavoidable. Friday worked out okay. And Saturday was kind of a work day but kind of a weekend day, so I’m okay with that.

As I type this all out, I realize that combining errands presents three major problems for me: (a) I have to work around traffic, (b) my errands (and appointments) are scattered in different cities, so if I were to do them all in one day, it really might take the entire day, and (c) even if I stacked all my errands into one day, I’d still have unmoveable lessons, classes, and appointments in different cities on different days as well. And I can’t consolidate those, because they are daily things like exercise, or they’re dependent on other people’s schedules. Gah! For a work-at-home person, I sure do a lot of traveling around in my daily life. I guess that’s the price I pay for living in an odd place like San Pablo, but… gosh, this is really frustrating. Am I doomed to spend part of each day out somewhere?

Well, my solutions-forming brain is spent. If anyone has any ideas on this, please, send them my way! In the meantime, I’ll relish today’s “full” work day (4 PM: meeting with landlords, yoga class or home practice afterward) and see how much I can get through before the week ends tonight.