Thanks to everyone who is doing the September Reset Time Tracking Challenge! My apologies if you got two emails from me this morning (a few people did — we had a slight email sending snafu). Whether you got two emails or one, please answer the survey questions in the Friday email — the one about planning the week and the weekend. There is a link to the survey site in that email and I’m offering a small donation to one of a few non-profits as an incentive to fill that out. Getting a high number of survey responses will be really helpful to me! Thank you!
In the meantime, a few links — next Tuesday I’ll be joining the OpEd Project to talk about “time management for thought leaders.” Tickets for this virtual event are available here.
Over at Before Breakfast this week I interviewed Dr. Marisa G. Franco about feeling worthy and her new book on the topic. Please check that out!
I also have not done a post yet on this week’s Best of Both Worlds episode, which was on fall favorites. Sarah and I recorded that one together in one place. I hope to do that post this weekend.
As for the time tracking…after posting yesterday I met my crew in the hotel lobby at about 6:35 p.m. We started walking at 6:40 p.m. in a light rain (I had an umbrella) to a great Mexican restaurant (this was all in Portland, Maine by the way) where we had a 7 p.m. reservation. We ate there until 9 p.m., then took an uber back to the hotel (in the rain). Everyone was pretty tired so we said our goodbyes and went to our rooms. I spent some time booking future flights, then got ready for bed, read for 30 minutes (9:45-10:15 p.m.) and went to bed around 10:30.
I woke up once around 4:30 but got back to sleep (though my sleep was kind of in and out after that). I set my alarm for 6:30 a.m., got up and got coffee and read blogs and headlines and got my running clothes on. I was out the door at 7 a.m. I ran along the Portland waterfront, enjoying the changing leaves, until about 7:40, when I stopped at The Holy Donut, and got my old-fashioned. I ran the rest of the way back to the hotel (with my donut in a bag!) and was there at 8. I ate my donut, showered, got ready, packed up, and was in an uber by about 8:40 a.m. I talked with my husband in the car and got to the airport at 9. I was through security and to the gate by about 9:10 — gotta love a small airport! I worked at the gate until 10 a.m. when I boarded my flight.
(Btw, I want to note how lucky I got here. There were two earlier flights to PHL, which I could have chosen but didn’t. Both of those were delayed by 2+ hours. Mine was on time — and in fact early. I sometimes have bad luck with flights so I want to pay attention to the fact that I was very lucky with today’s flight choice! The previous PHL flight boarded literally 15 minutes before us despite being scheduled for something like 7 a.m.)
I checked email and read headlines for about 20 minutes and then got my book out and read that as we took off. I probably read for about an hour (10:45-11:45 a.m.) at which point we landed. I zipped off the plane — I brought a duffel bag so no need to wait for a gate-checked bag on my tiny plane — and was in the F terminal so it was a 5 minute walk to my car. Traffic was light and I was home at 12:45 p.m. (I talked to my college kid during this drive).
When air travel works it works. That was 4 hours door to door from Portland, ME to suburban Philadelphia. Since I sat at the gate for about 45 minutes in Portland, I probably could have cut it closer.
Anyway, I got home, got some lunch, and worked on random admin things from 1-1:30. Then I had a prep call for the OpEd Project event I linked to above (it’s going to be a good one!) and now I am posting this. I’ll work until about 5 p.m. today and then it is on to various weekend activities.
I hope your time tracking has been going well! Tracking the weekend is sometimes harder than tracking the work week because time is less structured, but I still think it’s worth knowing where the time goes. You could set a few alarms and check in when they go off. Send an email to yourself or just write notes down on some paper if you don’t have your log with you. You can always transfer the information later.
