This has been a good year for the blog. Traffic doubled from 2017 to 2018. Most of that boost came in the second half of the year, after Off the Clock came out. So, consequently, a lot of my most-read posts are from the second half of the year. But not all of them! Here are the winners of this pure popularity contest.
9 time habits that will make you super productive in 2018. What can I say — this is click bait. But the tips will probably make you productive in 2019 as well if you’d like to give it a read!
Guest post: “The biggest time saver yet — moving into a tiny house.” Readers loved Elisabeth Sharp McKetta’s take on moving into a shed behind her former house.
7 ways to spend less time doing housework, even if you don’t have a tiny house. A follow-up to McKetta’s guest post. Not all of us are going to shed the trappings of big house life. So how can we spend less time maintaining those larger houses?
Write fast, edit slow. I explain my writing philosophy of getting it all down in imperfect form, then coming back to it later (again and again and again). For first drafts, done is better than perfect, because there is no perfect without being done.
Take a load off: A suggestion for lightening the mental load. As a follow-up to the Gemma Hartley podcast (see below) I proposed that off-loading Monday-Thursday dinner prep would give people a big bang for their buck. Readers responded with numerous suggestions for lessening the mental overhead of getting food on the table.
Yes, weekends are real days too — plus vacation note. Saturday and Sunday are just as much a part of life as other days. Yet people don’t build them in to their mental models of life (one example not in this post: someone recently mentioned that she was home with her kids 2 days a week because she worked 3 days a week. By my count that means she’s actually home with them 4 days a week!) I do like this post, but I think it mostly got a lot of traffic because I didn’t post much over the next few days…because I was on vacation.
Some people work from home. Do you ‘home from work?’ If you work in an office from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., it is inevitable that you’ll need to do some personal tasks during work hours. This post talks about how to do them without going crazy (or losing your job).
The energy equation. Sometimes doing something is more energizing than doing nothing, especially when small children are involved.
Podcast: Fed Up author Gemma Hartley and emotional labor. I post about the Best of Both Worlds podcast every Tuesday, but this was the only podcast post to make the top 10 list. I think one of the reasons it got so much traffic is that there are a lot of comments and people were debating emotional labor, housework, mental load, etc., and sharing their own experiences.
So you want to be a High Achiever… Earlier this year, I reviewed the book The Ambition Decisions for the Wall Street Journal. This post talks about some of the take-aways from that book, and the traps to avoid if you do wish to keep your foot on the gas with your career. Some key ones: don’t assume mom knows best, and you might want to rethink what constitutes “chaos.”
I will do a follow-up post later with some “you might have missed” lesser-read posts! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these (or re-read them. I forgot writing some of them!)
Yes!! I just started writing fast and editing slow. I’m always half afraid to come back to my hastily written work but it’s almost always decent.
I read all the blogs and thoroughly enjoy them, making little changes here and there. I’m 55, and started a masters last year. Despite lots of flags that I might just be deluding myself, I thought that with loans available for part time study and grown up kids, now was the time. My three ‘children’ are aged 28-24 and we now have 4 in the house, soon to be 5 due to partners moving in too. We downsized a few years ago when they started leaving but we now have more in the house than ever and I love it. Add to that a promotion at work, life is chaotic and sometimes overwhelming, so I take all your tips on board and have read all your books. Thank you for all your words of wisdom, they really do help. I hope you have a lovely Christmas and wish you a healthy and happy 2019.