Good morning! A lot of people resolve to spend their time better in the new year. The first step to spending time better is knowing where it’s going now. To that end, I’m hosting a Time-Tracking Challenge this week. I’ll be posting my time logs (in narrative form) on this blog from January 8-14. Several hundred people have signed up to track along. If you’d like to get daily motivational emails, sign up here. Of course, you don’t need the emails to track time. All you need is some place to record what’s going on in your life. You can use my spreadsheet (available in Excel or PDF, 15- or 30-minute versions), or a notebook, or one of dozens of time-tracking apps on the market.
This Monday at 5 a.m., when my weekly time log starts, I was mercifully still asleep. I was feeling under the weather yesterday and went to sleep at 8:30 p.m. last night. Fortunately, that seems to have done the trick. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. when I heard my husband in the shower. I got in afterwards (at which point he took off — he needed to be in NYC by 9 a.m. today), then heard the 2-year-old yelling for me. I got him up, changed him, and he came and lay down in bed with me to chat for a while. We went downstairs around 7:30, at which point I made coffee, organized back-packs (finding one incomplete homework form, due today), and made breakfast for four children (scrambled eggs, toast, bananas). I got the kids up, and got them going on eating.
G (nanny) arrived a few minutes before 8 a.m. I helped the 8-year-old finish his homework, then got everyone out to the bus by 8:30. This involved a lot more finding library books, shoes, etc. than is my preference for a Monday. We cut it tight, but that was OK, because it was pretty cold outside. But not as cold as it was yesterday morning. It was 2 degrees out when I went to church on Sunday! This morning, now a balmy 18 degrees, going up to 30, seems tropical by comparison.
Anyway, I’m now settling down to work — likely with a break to run — until the kids will be home a bit before 4. I’ll post my full time log from the day tonight.
Even if you don’t want to track a whole week, tracking a day or two can be enlightening. Why not give it a whirl?
I think your kids will be home before 4 today….Life (along with weather forcecasts) happens. My high schooler is already on her way home; my college student will hopefully cancel a dinner shift of valet car parking and I expect that my new college graduate on his first day on his new job will experience an early office closing just as I am.
@Judy- yep. I’ve just spent much of the past hour being interrupted by calls from the schools, making sure all 3 kids have new dismissal plans with their teachers, etc. Ah…
My first morning of time-tracking was “side-tracked” by not being able to reach my daughter and having to track her down (pun unintended, but it fits..lol). She’s 24, but takes Lyft to the Metro to get to work and always checks in and she didn’t this morning and then I couldn’t reach her by instant message, text, email, or on Facebook. So I pretty much lost any productivity that might have occurred the first half of my day (until I finally heard from her!) Just another day in my disorderly life……….
@Jennifer – yep, there was some side-tracking with locating my kids too. I know what happens when there’s a 2-hour delay with my daughter’s half-day kindergarten + enrichment program at a different location, but I hadn’t figured out what happened with an early closure. Unclear if I needed to go get her and from where. Fortunately, it all worked out.
I came to say the exact same thing! Schools are closing at 1pm today for us. THankfully grandma is still here with us so all it took was a quick call to tell her to go pick them up 2 hours earlier than planned.
@Ana- good you had a good back-up plan. But yeah – we’ve had all of 1.5 days of school since December 22. Not a stellar record!
I missed the memo on the week of time tracking but I think a couple days of it this week would be valuable!