One of the weirder parts about having quit my job is that I suddenly have WAY less time than I used to. Things that I used to accomplish in a day or two are now taking weeks, and for the last six months I’ve been battling the horrible feeling that I’m falling further and further behind. This is stressful, to say the least, and is one of the reasons I haven’t been posting much recently.
I finally decided to audit my time and find out where it was going. So I started logging my time – recording everything I did from the time I got up until dinnertime. (I consider my “working day” to end at dinnertime, whenever that is.)
I’m keeping my time log in Google Sheets, and the entries look something like this:
I have a sheet for the current day’s results, with a convenient pie chart (which was incredibly easy to create – thank you Google!) that shows where my time went that day. Here’s my time chart for Thursday:
As you can see, Thursday was dismal for productivity. I logged 12.5 hours, of which only 2.5 hours actually got used on projects (bottom right). Most of the day was spent either on social media, having lunch with a friend, or doing things like shopping, cooking and eating breakfast, or physical therapy.
But the truly horrifying thing about Thursday is, of course, the lower right corner. I spent only 3.3% of my time catering to cats! My One Job, the sole reason for my worthless human existence, and I spent less than 5% of my time on it. Terrible. No wonder the cats harass me so much. I don’t know why they put up with me. (Though, when liberally supplied with cat treats, they will occasionally concede that I’m not the Worst Human Ever. 😉 )
I’m also keeping an aggregate log that shows the time log over a period of multiple days. This one has fewer categories (making it easier to read). This is the data for Thursday and Friday:
As you can see, I am scarcely doing any better at my One Job (better keep those cat treats coming!), but things are looking up a bit, project-wise. I’m getting 30% of my time in on projects, which is not good but not totally dismal, and I’ve drastically dropped the amount of time spent on entertainment. (That’s largely because I closed the Facebook tab on my browser. Sorry, Zuckerberg!)
30% of my time, when I’m logging about 12 hours a day, is only about 3.5 hours. This is pretty awful. My goal is to up that to 6 hours a day. I’m trying to understand the ebb and flow of my mental/physical energy throughout the day, so I can plan my day more effectively.
The other problem I’m grappling with is simply that I have too many projects. Once upon a time, when I was working full-time, I would take on one project at a time – two, at most. Now I have five projects going on simultaneously:
- Being the Board President of the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. I don’t regret taking this on, because the Museum is really important to me and I think I’m doing a pretty good job as Board President, but it is a TON of work, and on more than one occasion I’ve had to drop everything I was doing and focus on Museum stuff full time for weeks or months. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
- Warp & Weave. I’m still developing my class, but it’s been really hard with everything else going on.
- My stole commission.
- Consulting work for Firehorse, a nonprofit development consulting agency. (Pays some of the bills.)
- Tomatomania.
You can see that, if I’m only getting 3.5 hours of project work in per day, progress on five fronts is pretty much impossible. Even if I boost it to 6 hours a day, that still means pretty slow progress.
So I am thinking about how best to balance it all. I don’t want to drop any of those projects, but I think that Tomatomania will settle down in a few weeks, and if I can focus on Everett’s stole and get that out of the way, I’ll be down to three projects, and I think that’s manageable.
Meanwhile, the weather is warm, the sun is shining, and I’ve been unable to resist the urge to be the Ugly Californian (kinda like the Ugly American 🙂 ) when my friends in Massachusetts and Wisconsin post photos of their iced-in homes. Lest you feel left out, here are a few pix from the garden:
The tomatoes are still quite young (just got their first set of true leaves), but it’s warm enough that I’m transplanting them anyway. It seems silly to keep them under fluorescent lights when all that wonderful sun is shining down!
The cats are enjoying the warm weather, too. We don’t have built-in air conditioning, so when it’s warm out, we frequently secure the screen doors and then open up the front and back doors to encourage air flow. The cats love it because they can watch the birds and squirrels, and enjoy the scents of the outdoors. “Hey Mom, can you turn on the TV?”
I love all your blog posts, tho’ I don’t comment for all of them. Right now I’m making horehound candy (lozenges) for myself and anyone else who can stand the taste of horehound…bitter but is so good on your throat. Anyway…I have decided that your next thing has got to be stand-up comedy!
See you in July in Reno…
Love your way of tracking your time, a great visual, something I’m afraid to do. The poppies are gorgeous, fruit trees, too. I’m 250 miles south of home and this evening everything is covered in ice. At home, far north, 12″-18″ more snow, so I very much appreciate your flower and gardening photos!
Hi Tien, Time tracking is a good start. What you need to do is at work’s end in the evening, write down only 3 large milestones you want to accomplish tomorrow. Then go sleep.
The next morning, get up, make something with 30 g of protein in it for breakfast within 30 min of waking, if you have an exercise routine then do that, shower, dress to shoes (yes, put shoes on), and then go into your office (shut the cats out, sorry kittens), and tackle those three items immediately. Do NOT read email. Do NOT read Facebook. In fact, if you are able to do it, cut off internet access until the writing and planning is done. Or if you need access, open the firewall only to Firebase and the library link that you need.
Your focus is key. Get a timer. Set it for 30-40 min, which is about the max for any of us to concentrate but those of us with anxiety/ADD/focus issues are especially susceptible. Work on one of the three milestones. Preferably the first one. When the timer goes off, get up, stretch, set the timer for 15 minutes, open the door, pet the tyrants, make a cup of tea, breathe. DO NOT CHECK EMAIL OR SOCIAL MEDIA. When the timer goes off, set it for 30-40 min and take on milestone 2. Then 15 min break without electronics. Then the last 30-40 min on milestone 3.
Or, if you’re good about concentrating, all three sessions with milestone 1 and shorten the breaks. Do not check electronics until one milestone is complete and you’ve done at least the first 3 cycles. When you finally do break out, set a timer to 30 min. Do your thing with the email/electronics. Then start your cycles again. Break for lunch. Only check electronics twice a day, once around 10-11 am (if cycles/milestones permit) and once around 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm. Believe me, the world will not end because you haven’t answered except twice a day.
Therefore, make the milestones shorter and bite-size. You can chart it on a calendar.
I saw my writing time slide away without realizing where it was going. It was going to housework, email, and “research” that would end up in some not-on-topic part of the ‘net. Guard your time. 525,600 minutes. I now spend one day per week like this and I’m making progress. At last. But it was a hard go for a while. We are all net-addicted fiercely. And set your wake-up alarm to an early hour.
I am busier than ever since I retired. Screen time is a time suck for me, but some is fiber-related (blogs). Two habits that help me is 1) I spend a few minutes in the AM setting my intentions for the day, and 2) I leave projects at a state where I can restart in less than two minutes. I have also been reorganizing my work areas to facilitate flow.
So, is growing dye plants a fiber activity or a gardening activity? 😉
I enjoyed your interview with Sara Nordling!