We are halfway through the work-week, but not halfway through the week. It’s a critical difference! My time sheets start at 5 a.m. on Monday (that seems like a good starting point for the week for me). If that’s the start time, guess where the half-way mark is. It’s 5 p.m. THURSDAY. I don’t know about you, but 5 p.m. Thursday sounds like the end of the week to me. But it’s not. It’s the exact halfway mark. Something to keep in mind.
Anyway, last night after posting this around 7:45 I said goodbye to G, then did a short scavenger hunt with my big kids (the 2-year-old mercifully stayed down). The next two hours featured a combination of dealing with my kids and reading. I turned out my light at 10 p.m. None of the three big kids were actually asleep then, but oh well.
10 p.m – 3:30 a.m. — slept. My daughter has a cold from starting kindergarten (of course) and I seem to have caught the coughing aspect of it. I woke up coughing at 3:30.
3:30 – 5 a.m. — lay in bed, increasingly agitated that I could not go back to sleep. I saw the clock at 4:45, so I’m pretty sure I was up all this time.
5 – 6 a.m. — slept, then woke up to the 2-year-old screaming for me.
6-6:30 – snuggled in bed with the 2-year-old. He wanted to be in different PJs, so he undressed himself during this time, went and retrieved different PJs, and had me put him in them. So I guess while I was lying down in the dark for much of this time it wasn’t really relaxing.
6:30 -7:45 — read, drank coffee, ate breakfast, got in my running clothes while the 2-year-old watched videos. The 5-year-old got up at 7 and needed some attention. I got them both breakfast too, and got the big boys up.
7:45 – 8 – another BTN 1.1 miles on the treadmill (“better than nothing”). I listened to the #AmWriting podcast where they talked about writer finances. (Note: Best of Both Worlds crossed 20k downloads today!)
8-8:30 – showered, dressed, hair, make-up.
8:30-8:45 — got the kids to the bus. This morning’s crisis was the 10-year-old remembering he needed to put various things in his math folder. All 7 children from the neighborhood made it on time again.
8:45- noon — worked on Off the Clock. Unfortunately, this edit felt like banging my head against the wall. I decided to start chapter 1 in a different way, which means an extended metaphor now feels misplaced, and I can’t figure out how to transition into my own time-tracking experience. Hmm. There was pretty much negative progress during this time.
12 -12:30 – my FB Live chat. Click on that link to tune in. I answered various time-trackers’ questions.
12:30 – 12:50 – grabbed lunch, made copies of my daughter’s birthday party invite
12:50 – 2:15 – did a webinar with Lotanna. We had some technical difficulties at the beginning, but it was kind of cool that she was in Nigeria, and I was in the US, and we could be sharing our conversation with people worldwide.
2:15-2:45 — semi-downtime, but mostly work, answering emails, etc.
2:45-4 — a different webinar, for a corporate client.
4-4:30 – hung out with the 2-year-old for a bit, welcomed kids off the bus, had a snack.
4:30-5:30 – worked. Prepped for tomorrow, email, etc.
5:30-5:50 – ate dinner with the kids and G
5:50-7 – drove to our elementary school and did back to school night for the 7-year-old’s class. I learned that parties may no longer feature food. I get that they’re trying to teach healthy habits and not celebrate everything with cupcakes, but this is kind of surreal. Most adult parties feature food. Unless they’re college parties featuring only hard liquor. I met my 7-year-old’s meal worm, which is part of their current science investigation. Also, some of his friends’ parents.
Now I am posting this. I hope to get in bed by 10 again tonight given the wretchedness of last night. If I hadn’t woken up coughing I would have gotten 8 hours of sleep. As it was, 6.5 hours after several other short nights is really catching up to me. Here’s hoping tonight is better.
I haven’t tracked my time since last October, but am enjoying doing so again now.
Our nursery school stopped allowing snacks at birthday parties after cookies I made (eek!) causes a contact allergy in a child as many as 4 hours after the cookies were eaten. I get you can never be too careful, but even I, a weight-loss doctor, lament the loss of some sort of celebratory food treat!
Thanks for the updates and inspiration. I’d love to track my time every week, but it’s a hard habit to keep up. I do much better when you host the challenges!
Also, I remember you writing a post semi-recently where you justified spending money on Kindle ebooks, but I can’t find it. Any chance you could link to it for me?
@Rachel – hmm… I wrote this in a Verily article: “I also decided not to be cheap in the book-buying department. A paperback or e-book tends to cost less than what many people would spend on morning Starbucks and lunch out during the workday. I brew my own coffee and make my own food. If I buy two books a week, I still come out ahead.” (link here: https://verilymag.com/2017/03/finding-time-to-read)
Yes, that was it! Thank you!! I’m a big reader and sometimes I have trouble justifying the cost. Now I just need to cut back on my Starbucks habit so I can buy more books 🙂
This idea of parties without food seems so joyless. I wouldn’t want to go to a party with no food or drinks.
@Sarah – I understand maybe limiting food with birthday celebrations. Cupcakes twenty-five times a year (for each kid in the class) is probably overkill. But we’re not even allowed to have food at Halloween parties and Valentine’s Day parties! I suspect the way this will play out is that the kids will wind up bringing home a lot more stocking stuffer type junk (easily broken toys, or pencil erasers or whatever) since people like to have *something* festive at parties.
OMG Laura. I remember those days and now wonder how I did it! Except I had 3 daughters. I did leave my youngest at school once because I forgot she was out early that day. Now I’ve been retired for a little over a year and am doing the challenge because I feel like I should be much further along in my organizing/cleaning/garden worthy of a gardening tour/quilts made for everyone on my list, etc. So far I realize I underestimate how much time I am taking on certain aspects of my day. Thanks so much and don’t worry you will have days of so much sleep you will be bored!
Thanks for the reminder that the week is only halfway over. I work long days-four 9.5 hour days and I get done for the week at 6 pm on Thursdays. When I do these time tracking weeks I always lament the fact that I’m too tired to do anything but sit on week nights. But I do have all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday to be productive.
Hi Laura, I’m tracking my time for the first time (I had a failed attemp last year), and I’m doing great. I’ma lawyer, so basically for me is doing the same that I do at work!
The only thing is that currently I’m in a phase when the work is low, so I think this is not an usual week. Should I try it during a different week? The other problem is that when I have my regular work load, I have no time for time-tracking (haha).
Please give me your input.
@Flora- there’s no harm in trying an additional week to see what’s different, and what isn’t. I do think that one of the things time tracking shows is that there are no typical weeks — every week will have something. People discover that the picture they have of their “typical” life occurs pretty infrequently in practice!