Congratulations to everyone who has been tracking their time this week! If you started at 5 a.m. Monday September 14, then the week is officially over. You now have a record of all 168 hours.
If you have been doing the project, would you please do me a *huge* favor and fill out the wrap-up survey? There is a link in today’s email. The data on people’s time tracking experience will be incredibly helpful for me. Thank you! I’m doing a small donation to one of several non-profits as an incentive.
I finished out my 168 hours in a fairly low-key way. I posted this, then mostly hung out the rest of the evening. We made dinner from 6-6:30, then ate family dinner (grilled chicken + corn and garden tomatoes) from 6:30-6:50 more or less. We cleaned up and the 16-year-old and 11-year-old went together to Scouts. My husband joined them at 8 for the parent meeting. Meanwhile I hung out here, worked on my puzzle, hung out with the little guy and finished one book and started another. Laundry happened in there too. I was in bed around 11:30 I believe — then I was woken up by a text at 6:05 a.m. (I’d forgotten to turn the sound off). I was also up at 2:30 for the bathroom.
So anyway, I’m up and posting. My observations on the week: I slept 53.25 hours, for an average of 7.6 hours per day. This is a little higher than normal — which may explain why I am up early this AM, and wasn’t really able to go back to sleep after that text. But it’s pretty close to normal, even with travel and the like.
Work clocked in exactly at 40 hours. This was mostly concentrated Monday to Thursday (I worked 4.25 hours on Friday and about 1.75 total over the weekend). This week was more heavy on the networking front than usual with my gathering of authors and creators in Portland.
I ran four times: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings in Portland along the water, which was lovely, and then Saturday morning around my own neighborhood. I worked out with my trainer on Monday for 30 minutes, and then did two short strength sessions on my own (just 10-15 minutes). I did a long (hour-plus) walk around Portland mid-day Thursday.
I read basically two full books! I clocked 9.25 hours of reading. This is a function of a few things. First, I read on both my plane flights. Second, I was writing about my time publicly, so there were a few nights where I read for 30 minutes before bed when I might have gotten sucked into instagram or something. We had a low key weekend — which I have some mixed feelings about but it is what it is, so there was reading time there. My 6-year-old is also definitely into having daddy “finish” the bedtime job right now, so often once they’re in there I’m kind of done for the night. I get him ready and read him a quick story and then I have some time in the evenings. Since we weren’t doing much in the evenings this weekend I read for at least an hour in bed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s a reminder that I really do have time for this and I need to be good about curating my TBR list because that time will be spent on something.
I also did a fair amount of puzzle-assembling. I started a new one last week and I’d say I’m more than half done. I clocked 5.75 hours on this project! Most of this was in 15-20 minutes chunks here and there between things (I rarely do the puzzle for more than 30 minutes, though I did once or twice on the weekend). Nonetheless, small chunks add up.
I had two hours of Choral Arts rehearsal Monday night, and then 30 minutes of choral practice for the church choir Sunday AM, followed by an hour-long service.
The kids are definitely in my log, though what this looks like changes as they get older. I drove my high schoolers to school on Monday and Tuesday, and picked up my 16-year-old at cross country on Monday and Friday. I read stories to my little guy on the four nights I was home. I was the “adult partner” for a Cub Scout meeting. I went in the hot tub one night with the little guys and supervised as they blew cat tail seeds around. I enjoyed a lovely chat with my daughter outside on Saturday later in the afternoon – I’m glad I suggested that. I talked on the phone with my college kid a handful of times (and spent time booking tickets to go visit him!)
I had my big adventure of going to Portland this week, and then the weekend was a little anti-climactic. We had a lot of sports starting up (tennis, flag football, baseball) so there wasn’t a whole lot of space to schedule stuff (though rain affected the schedule somewhat). There was a fair amount of amorphous time. I read and did my puzzle and the kids all had stuff they did (the 11-year-old played with two friends, for instance, and the 16-year-old went to a sleepover Saturday night). But I didn’t have anything I did that I was like “oh, that was a fun and memorable weekend experience.” I guess one highlight is that our church organist (a young man who is studying organ performance) did a fantastic Mozart piece as a postlude. Next weekend there will be more adventures.
And Portland was truly cool. It’s nice to spend time thinking about what I want to do when I grow up. I did manage to get all my “regular” work done, and even spent some time on writing Golden Hours. A lot can fit in a week.
I hope your week was satisfying! Let me know what happened and what you learned. And of course you can send me your log if you’d like too!
I have a few question marks on my Friday and Saturday time logs, but I’m pleased with how much time I did track. I saw that when I set an intention to do something creative in the evenings, I actually did it, instead of flopping on the couch. I was somewhat dreading having Cub Scout and Girl Scout commitments in one day, but I can see from the log that took up only a small piece of the day and actually left me feeling energized. Overall, this was probably my most satisfying week since my kids have been back in school!
@Emily S – excellent! I’m so glad you were able to do something creative in the evenings. And yes, even weekends with a lot of commitments tend to have some down time. It’s good to see this. Congrats on a satisfying week.