I learned a lot from writing 168 Hours about how to use my time better. The best time management is not about planning conference calls down to the minute. It is about putting as many of the things you love in the 168 hours you have each week. Good time management also means chucking as much as possible that is neither pleasurable nor meaningful for you or the people you care about.
Of course, some weeks are better than others, so that’s why it’s important to take stock from time to time on how things are going. Over the past week, I had some good moments and bad moments.
Good:
– Using Fresh Direct’s QuickShop tool to do my grocery shopping. The website generates a list of all the groceries you’ve ever ordered from them, and then you go through and click the ones you want, so you don’t have to go hunting around for Cheerios.
– Rather than spend yet another hour hunting online for vacation rentals in California, just called an agency and had them send me a handful of appropriate listings.
– Planned a good weekend. My parents were visiting for Sam’s baptism, so in addition to the ceremony, we also did a lot of fun NYC activities like going to the aquarium in Coney Island (the ocean looks beautiful in February), thus recreating my husband and my second date — with our two kids in tow.
– Did “date night” on Saturday night. There are benefits to having grandparents in town!
– Started writing 1,000 words a day in a new novel. This is purely speculative, but I improve my writing by writing. If this is a long term priority, then I need to start blocking out the hours to do it.
Bad:
– Picked up the house instead of playing with my baby.
-Puttered around last night when I was really tired instead of just going to sleep.
– Did not run as many miles as my marathon training plan called for. I made excuses (I’m tired, it’s snowy…) but the excuses won’t really help when I’m trying to run 26.2 miles. I also haven’t been doing the requisite cross-training. I could download something interesting to read on the bike but…I haven’t. So there we go.