That is the topic of this week’s Best of Both Worlds episode. Sarah was given some leeway to choose her clinic days next year, so this sparked a whole discussion of what the ideal part-time schedule would be. If you’re going to work 3 days a week, which should they be? Or if you’re going to work 20-30 hours in a job, when would it be best to log those? A lot of organizations have landed on a hybrid schedule of being in the office three days a week and working at home 2 days. If you have a choice, which days should you choose to work from home?

There’s no one right answer for everyone, but we suggest some things to think about. We also suggest creating a “realistic ideal week” template for thinking this through.

Please give the episode a listen. And please consider joining our Patreon community where we discuss this and other topics!

My current working schedule tends to be mostly 8:15-4:15 or so, with some days ending a little earlier and some a little later based on the driving schedule. Add in breaks and various other responsibilities and it tends to come out around 35 hours a week.

Anyway, today was novel day. I was excited to dive into my manuscript and…it was also the day that a lot of other stuff seemed to be happening at the house. Let’s just say the doorbell rang several times, stuff needed to be tracked down, various things needed to be delivered to the right places, and then it turned out that a child had forgotten a school laptop at home and desperately needed it by 10:30 a.m.

So…a lot going on. As I’ve written numerous times on this blog, sometimes I fantasize about a cabin in the woods where I would work uninterrupted. But I will take a writing retreat this summer to finish my edits; this current round is about getting the manuscript into a state where it is close enough to finished that an immersion in it is helpful. Everything did quiet down reasonably after 10:30 a.m. or so and I was able to work through the chapters. Later in the book it’s a lighter lift — as I’d more figured out characters by that point in the original writing, and I am keeping most of the later plot points from earlier iterations. The biggest change today was probably deleting a whole section. That I could do even with the leaf blowers going.

I do wait for reasonable conditions (see: the open day) but if I waited for perfect conditions I’d never get anything done. As I do want to write this story, waiting for perfect isn’t an option. Maybe someone reading the novel will think “hmm, it really feels like she was writing that section with a leaf blower going outside.” But we shall see!

The aftermath of this disaster consumed seven hours of what was already an incredibly busy week. Seven hours is an interesting number, because it is the equivalent of “finding an extra hour in the day!” — a promise I have read on a great many magazine covers. And yet, if we had sat down at the beginning of the week, and tried to find seven hours for something like training for a triathlon or setting up a new mentoring program, I imagine we all would have struggled.

So what happened? Basically, time is elastic. When we decide that we need to do something, we find the time to do it. Other stuff either doesn’t happen, or it takes less time, or it gets punted forward. Much other stuff turns out to be more malleable than we might have imagined. And so, of course, the key to time management is treating the things we *want* to do with the urgency of the things we *need* to do. We make time for them first, and let everything else take the hit.

Easier said than done, to be sure. But I keep trying. This week, for instance, has turned out to have more time-consuming stuff in it, mostly personally though some professionally, than I planned. Such is life. I also had planned to take Thursday afternoon “off” for some little adventures from my winter fun list (visiting a greenhouse, seeing wintry scenes at an art museum). When I lost big chunks of focused time on Wednesday with the delivery window fiascos, Thursday was an obvious back up spot.

But I decided that time is elastic. I would probably feel behind one way or the other, whether I did my adventures or not. Better to have the adventures in this time I’d allotted and trust I’d figure something out.

So I did. Nothing life changing. A 30-minute stroll through the Brandywine museum looking at Andrew Wyeth paintings. About 90 minutes at Longwood looking at orchids and wintry meadows. Home in time to log another hour of work before dinner. But Thursday felt a little more memorable than it would if I’d stayed at my desk. I’m sure everything will fit one way or another.

Photo: Scarlet-plume from the Longwood greenhouse

Ever wondered where the time really goes? How about finding out? You can sign up for my free 2022 time-tracking challenge here!

Here’s how it works: Starting on Sunday January 9th, I’ll send you a series of emails guiding you through the process. You start tracking time on Monday, January 10th, at 5:00 a.m. (You do not have to be awake then! I hope I won’t be….)

Write down what you’re doing, checking in 3-4 times a day or so. It’s fine to approximate. I don’t track how many times I go to the bathroom or grab a drink of water. If I’m hanging out with the kids, I’ll just write “kids” rather than trying to describe the mess of playing with toys, cleaning up someone’s spill, changing a diaper, etc. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You just want to get a reasonable picture of where the time goes.

Then you keep going for 168 hours — until Monday January 17th at 4:30 a.m. (It’s fine to declare yourself “done” on Sunday night when you go to bed if you want). I’m hoping to recruit a few folks for time-makeovers for the blog, so if you are interested in that, please be sure to participate.

It should be fun. I know that over 3000 people are signed up so far…hopefully a few more will join us! When we know where the time goes, we can make wise choices based on reality, rather than stories. I promise it will be helpful. So why not give it a shot? I’ll also be posting my time logs here next week! There is going to be a lot of unpacking….

We officially moved ourselves yesterday, though. We ate a Grubhub delivered dinner on the floor of the new kitchen because we don’t have any chairs. Or a table. We slept on air mattresses on the floor because we won’t have beds for a few days. It was not the easiest night. The toddler really fussed about sleeping in the portable crib, and was up until 11 or so. There are random beeps from various things. Nothing is where it is supposed to be so I kept tromping up and down the stairs. Some of the kids were wigged out by the new space, and some of the air mattresses were less than fully comfortable (I did OK, but I was also really tired). Also, the van battery died last night so we had to use the jumper cables, which added a note of whimsy (ha) to a tough evening. I would really like to replace the van but it seems there are no cars to be had…same problem affecting our oven, fridge, etc…

I know the first night anywhere is hard. I have a vague memory of our first night in the old house some 10.5 years ago. Everyone was freaked out by new noises and such. We will get used to things and when all our new stuff is there things will slowly come together. Already some of the kids’ new furniture is in and it’s really cute. And the 12-year-old has really liked having his own room. He’s already assembled the (indoor, foam) hatchet toss set he got for Christmas in there.

So, patience…And wow, there is nothing like seeing all your stuff come out of the cabinets to remind you how fast stuff can accumulate…Everything will find its way to a new home eventually.

Today is a day for posting retrospectives, so I will play along. It’s been a good year, if a tiring one.

I just remembered that the year started with a real professional highlight: I was on the Drew Barrymore show in early January! She was so sweet, and called herself an uber-fan, which was really exciting to one of my kids who kept pointing out that she is the girl in ET. The girl in ET read mom’s book! Nice.

I had done a pilot version of the Tranquility by Tuesday project in fall 2020, and (happily) got statistically significant results. So I ran the full Tranquility by Tuesday project in the spring with what wound up being about 150 people. Participants answered questions about their time, learned nine time management rules over nine weeks, answered questions about the implementation, and then reported back at the end of the study (and a month later, and three months later). I wrote the manuscript of the book, and am now on the second round of edits. As I’m reading various “best of” lists for 2021, I’m aiming to write one that will make it on to some 2022 lists. So that is a goal.

2021 was another year of the Before Breakfast podcast — a new episode every weekday morning. And Best of Both Worlds! We launched our Patreon community, and I have really enjoyed the monthly meet-ups.

I feel like much of the year has been consumed with home renovation stuff. We got our permit and our historic commission approval early in the year. We passed inspection (thus closing out the permit) this week. So all clear to move in! Phew, since I booked the movers for next week….I’m trying to keep the mindset this will be an adventure, rather than total chaos when no one can find anything and we have boxes and only half our furniture for a while…

The house really does look nice. There are a few things that are not done. Our shutters aren’t on, so the outside of the house doesn’t look finished. The oven arrived, and was dented, so it was sent back, thus putting us into supply chain chaos to get a replacement, so no oven until February. We can probably make do since we have a stove and a microwave. If not I guess I can get some sort of toaster oven? Our dishwasher also didn’t arrive, but we had kept the old one in the garage from before the renovation so it got reinstalled for the next few weeks. The fridge arrives — fingers crossed — and will be installed Monday. In time for the move Tuesday.

Due to a measuring snafu, there is no carpet in the playroom. That is coming in late January. As is wallpaper in another part of the house. Various pieces of furniture are back ordered. Some stuff that would have been junked will be moved, used for a few months, and then junked. (Or donated if possible…but some stuff is in pretty lousy condition.) Eventually things will be done. Or at least at a sustainable level of un-doneness. By the time I am writing my retrospective for 2022 I want to be feeling very at home in the new home.

I spent yesterday taking down kid artwork in the current house. Some pieces had been on the wall since 2013 or so, which was really giving me the nostalgic feels. This house has so many memories. I am excited about the new one though it is strange to think I only have a few more nights in this current one. And all this art my babies created! And now they are teenagers/pre-teens texting me. Well, some of them. I do still have a baby who will no doubt create his own art that can go up on the walls at the new place.

Even if we didn’t wind up moving during the calendar year of 2021, the year still brought a lot of transitions. One kid started high school, another started middle school, and another started first grade at a new school. It has not been 100% smooth, but we are muddling along.

I feel like I have put a few good systems in place. We now have a good meal system of doing Sunbasket kits on Monday and Tuesday, breakfast-for-dinner on Wednesdays, and make-your-own-pizza Fridays. That only leaves Thursday for figuring out (well, and weekends) but that all feels a lot more manageable.

It was not my best year ever for athletic endeavors, but I do keep running. I ran with a friend on the last Saturday of every month, which we kept up the whole year. We celebrated our streak by stopping (a few days before Christmas) at a brewery that we run past every time — it was quite tasty!

It was also not a particularly distinguished year for reading. There was one big win — I finished War and Peace after reading one chapter a day for the whole year — but I felt like I lacked the mental energy to tackle much else. I read some books on the natural world (a few titles on birds and hummingbirds in particular) and some books by podcast guests and that’s about it. I am not particularly proud of this low tally because I know I had a lot of time that I could have used for reading, including some brainless stuff if I had wanted, and I just didn’t. I spent a lot of time scrolling around on Twitter while nursing the toddler and trying to get him to sleep and such.

On the other hand, I did build a lot of Lego sets with the kids. And I did a number of 1000-piece puzzles. So there’s that.

Anyway, everyone is healthy and reasonably happy so on that measure the year has been a success. Much transition, many long projects shepherded through, and hopefully in 2022 I can start enjoying some of those things!

Happy New Year to everyone! Thanks for reading this blog this year. I really appreciate it.

In other news: I track my time and so I know how I spent all 8760 hours of 2021. If you’d like to find out where the time really goes — just for a week — I’ll be running a time tracking challenge from January 10-16. You can sign up here. I send you motivational emails each day, and I’ll be posting here about it too.

Photo: Empty pantry, ready for us to fill it…probably a metaphor in there somewhere…

Perhaps this shouldn’t astonish me, but it does. Work was heavy, though not overly so. The planned personal events consumed many hours — the new house end-of-project walk-through, organizing and wrapping presents (that took over 3 hours to ensure under-the-tree equity…), a child’s band performance, choir practice — but these were built into the model. The complications happen when you throw in the curveballs: the forgotten earth science project materials that necessitated a trip to Michaels, the 6-year-old scratching his eye with the foam at gymnastics last night such that it is swollen and he can’t keep it comfortably open so he is home with me today, a during-the-week house showing that came up yesterday….

Life seldom goes as planned. But the upside of thinking through the week ahead of time — which I do each Friday — is that you can identify what absolutely has to happen. Then you can think about when it can happen. And then you can build in open space for when the inevitable crises arise. Since you know what has to happen, those priorities get automatically rescheduled for the available open space. And one way or another, stuff gets done.

Well, most of it. I didn’t order the mat to go under the exercise equipment at the new house, but to be honest, despite the time sensitivity there, it probably wasn’t a top priority…

Do you plan your weeks on Fridays?

I set my alarm for 6:10, intending to nudge the teenager out of bed, so he could take the bus to school. (He shares a room with his little brother, who can sleep a little longer, so we come wake him rather than have him set an alarm that is going to wake his brother too. This will not be the case in the new house thank goodness!). My husband and I had a walk-through meeting at our new house at 7 a.m. with the contractors to take stock of what needs to be fixed before we move in a few weeks from now. Our nanny agreed to come at 6:45 or so.

Well, I woke at 6:40. My alarm was ringing…but silently. I’m still not sure what I did there. My husband was up and in the shower but I guess hadn’t noticed that none of the rest of us were moving (including the teenager). I threw on some clothes, woke the kid up and drove over to the new house while my husband did the school run (since the bus was long gone by that point).

The house is coming along nicely. I trudged through with my coffee, flushing toilets to make sure they worked, turning on faucets and light switches and so forth. We may not have an oven when we move in, but we will have a stove so I guess that’s good. In any case, I was in the midst of that when I got a text from another child who asked if I had the felt and foam half-sphere he needed for an earth science project. What? He’d mentioned something on Friday, but I had not understood that this was needed by Monday morning. He thought I had ordered it or something and then when I was gone when he needed to leave there was general panic.

And so I found myself at Michael’s craft store after the construction walk-through. This was quite the place! They did indeed have foam half spheres. And full spheres. I bought a variety, plus felt for creating the various layers of the earth. And potato chips because I was hungry by this point and not inclined to make healthy breakfast choices. Is there any thing this store doesn’t have??? It’s a good thing I don’t go there often.

Anyway, I drove my bag of stuff over to the middle school and left it with the security guard who has a book shelf for just such forgotten things. Indeed, I saw that there were materials for other children in the same class sitting there.

By the time I got home it was 10:30 a.m. I attempted to get started with work, but wound up needing to deal with the forms to lock in the movers for early January. On the plus side, I learned that the Notes function on an iPhone can scan documents and turn them into PDFs. This is very useful knowledge!

Anyway, we’ll see what I get done over the next few hours before I take two of the kids to get dose #2. The people running the clinic (for 5-11 year olds) have promised a special guest at the post-shot waiting area. So…is it going to be Santa? I’m not sure it’s possible to keep kids socially distanced from Santa, and streams of children all piling on the same guy would be ironic at a Covid vaccine clinic. So maybe it won’t be Santa. One of the area sports team mascots? I’ll report back!

Photo: Colorful felt!

My flight from Des Moines to Chicago left at 6:25 p.m. Thursday, after my speech. I saw there was an earlier one, 4:55 p.m., and I thought about trying to switch, but I would have had to rush after my talk, and I was chatting with people and listening to the last speaker, and I couldn’t have gotten on an earlier flight to Philly from Chicago anyway, so it wouldn’t have gotten me home any earlier. So I stuck with the 6:25. I had a 48-minute layover in O’Hare. Not my favorite option, but that was what there was to make the last Philly flight (8:45 p.m.).

Despite the rain, we took off on time. We landed early! I was thrilled how well this was going. And then we taxied and taxied and…circled all of O’Hare, finally parking somewhere on the tarmac to wait for a gate that did not become available until 8:35 p.m. About 10 of us ran to the Philly flight, and all “missed” it. As in, the plane was still there at the gate, and was for several more minutes, but they’d shut the door so that was that. While everyone was yelling about that I went online and grabbed a seat on the 6:20 a.m. flight (the 9:30 a.m. one disappeared before my eyes) and booked a room at the nearby Marriott. Alas, I wound up getting only about 4 hours of disjointed sleep because I was a bit worked up by the evening sprint through O’Hare. After writing a blog post about not running every day, I wound up running twice in one day! Only once by choice.

The speech itself went well. Alas, this was the first trip where my new dietary issues wound up being something of a bummer. Longtime readers have heard my lament of suffering from sore throats and congestion. It appears to be a combo of “silent reflux” and certain food sensitivities. Dairy is a big one.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time in airports over the last three days and it turns out to be a lot harder to avoid dairy than I’d realized when you’re eating at the sorts of places that pop up in airports. Everything has cheese on it. Almost any salad has a layer of cheese. Sandwiches all have cheese. Pizza is of course covered with it. Many random other entrees are served with, say, a cream-based topping. I wound up eating a sandwich with cheese on the flight out because I was hungry and I am pretty sure the “special sauce” on a burger I got later was dairy-based (I’m not experienced enough in this to ask…and maybe it’s denial. I want to be a person who can eat anything and it looked good.) Sure enough, throat trouble.

(I now realize that some of my older episodes of Before Breakfast sound a lot more gravelly because of my chronic congestion. While I am bummed about the dairy issue, my singing voice is more clear in its absence!)

I am back home now. I think things will calm down next week. I turned in the Tranquility by Tuesday manuscript. My four speeches this week are all done and I only have one event next week (virtual). We listed the house, and while keeping it clean for showings won’t be easy, at least the ground work is done. There is still a move to orchestrate at some point soon but not quite yet. So time to pause and breathe. Well, and take the kids trick-or-treating….

Photo: 5 a.m. airport selfie. Good times. 

I had a goal for that last one. By trying random ideas out, I would hit upon a plot that I could then use for my NaNoWriMo novel (National Novel Writing Month…when people write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November — it’s a great way to get a draft done quickly).

And so I have faithfully written since January 1st. I missed one day, which I then made up (word count wise) the next day. I have 41,000 plus words in that free writing file from the almost 300 days that have passed in 2021.

And I’ve got…nothing. Ten months of trying stuff out has not revealed to me a plot that I actually want to write about. Ten months of thinking about this question daily has not produced an answer.

I’m not sure what to do about this. Perhaps if I just start writing on November 1st something will come to me but if it didn’t in 10 months that’s a tall ask of a particular day.

Perhaps my method was off. Because of the small daily required word count, I’d write little vignettes, or observations, or tiny character studies. Maybe if I’d made the word count higher I would have gone deeper. Or maybe doing something daily makes it something to be checked off, rather than something to be explored. I don’t really know.

So we shall see if NaNoWriMo happens now. I do think it’s a good discipline to do some creative writing every day. But I wish it had been a bit more fruitful! Is anyone else planning to do NaNoWriMo?