I felt slow and plodding. The course was hilly. And despite being in autumnal Maine, only about 2-3 miles of the course were truly scenic. Most was along the main road. The logistics were complicated, as they always are with races — where you leave your car, what bathroom facilities are available, where you wait before it starts, how you get back to the beginning, plus since races are on a certain day at a certain time you get the weather you get. The “terrible weather” phenomenon was why I did not wind up running the Thanksgiving 5k I’d signed up for.

All this is more complicated than just putting on your shoes and running. So I was not thinking I would seek out more races.

But…As I looked back over my time logs from 2024, I saw that I truly did not run long or regularly without a race to motivate me. I mean, even with the race I topped out at 23 miles/week but without it I was running a lot fewer miles. And fewer times. Despite allegedly being an “upholder” I may just be an obliger in my middle age when it comes to running.

And then a series of events nudged me in the race direction. First, the Philadelphia Distance Run, the smaller one in September (not the Philly marathon/half-marathon, which is huge) sent around an email with a discount for the Eagles winning the Super Bowl. Late September tends to be a good time (it’s easier to train for distance runs over the summer than, say, in the snow and slush of February/March). So I decided to sign up.

The Broad Street Race also sent around its lottery entry. This is a 10-mile race in early May. While I don’t like the crowds, I do like the distance (it’s the last 3 miles of a half marathon that always get me…). I knew my husband would be running it since his employer buys a corporate entry every year. But I have not gotten in from the lottery in the past and figured I probably wouldn’t this time. Then, lo and behold, I did win a spot.

And then my running buddy Jane texted this week to remind me that she was running a local 5-miler this weekend. This race is sponsored by her local running club that she’s involved in (she normally runs in costume). We usually run together on the last Saturday of the month but she couldn’t this weekend because of the race…and then we realized that, well, I could run this race too. Not in costume. But we can just do our normal run in a different place. So now I’ll be running that.

So that’s three races on the calendar! And sure enough, I nudged myself to go a little harder on the treadmill yesterday than I probably would have. I will likely run a few more times and run a little farther this summer than I would have otherwise too. I have no time goals for anything, and I reserve the right to not run if it’s sleeting or 95 degrees for any of these races. But I guess I’m back to getting those race T-shirts…

If you run, do you sign up for races? Do you find them motivating?

Photo: From a race that was almost 9 years ago now! 

(I did a study in which 150 people learned and implemented these rules over nine weeks, and their levels of time satisfaction did rise by statistically significant amounts!)

Anyway, in anticipation of the book, I’m going to start doing the occasional Tranquility by Tuesday (TBT) Scorecard here on the blog. I track my time, so I can look back on a week and see…how did I do? How many rules did I follow? What was the effect on my life?

My first rule is to “Give yourself a bedtime.” Since I have to wake up at 6:30 a.m. on weekday mornings (for kid getting ready/shuttling) and I need 7.4 hours of sleep/day, my bedtime has become 11 p.m. It used to be earlier, but in the new house the baby and I are both sleeping better…sometimes it helps to be a little farther away…. Over the past week (April 18-24), I was in my bedroom by 11 every night, and asleep at 11 every weekday night. I did stay up until 11:15 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night (horrors!). As a result of observing my bedtime, I was up a few minutes before my alarm 5 out of 7 days last week (the alarm was set for 7:30 on Sat/Sun and I was up before then, plus three of the weekdays I was up closer to 6:15). I really hate being sleep deprived and so I’ve become pretty fundamentalist about this rule, though I should note that getting in bed by 11 p.m. isn’t that challenging. We’ve also made some family choices (like driving the high schooler to school) so no one has to get up before 6:30.

My second rule is to “Plan on Fridays.” I plan my upcoming weeks on Fridays no matter what (well, unless I plan on Thursdays because I’m gone on Friday or something…), so I anticipate this being a boring entry in my scorecards…

Next up is “Move by 3 p.m.” This means to get some form of physical activity before 3 p.m. each day. I went for walks outside M, T, W, and F, and did a morning run on Saturday. On Sunday the time that worked for a run was 5 p.m. Thursday I did not do any particular physical activity. My life in general tends to feature a lot of running around, but I’m sure I can aim for 7 days in the future.

Rule #4 is “Three times a week is a habit.” Things don’t have to happen daily to count in our lives. For many fun/meaningful things, three times a week can make something part of our identities. In general these days I’m aiming to run three times a week, though I only did twice last week — I’m dealing with some IT band issues and so I had taken 2 weeks off of running. I would like to practice the piano three times a week, and I did that twice last week. I could put singing in this category, though that’s structurally built in twice (rehearsal + church service). I suppose I could combine piano + singing and pat myself on the back for doing music four times per week, but I actually want to aim to do each of those three times (adding in a singing practice session and another piano one) so that’s a goal for the future.

Rule #5 is to “Create a back-up slot.” I tend to leave Fridays as open as possible in order to use this time as a back-up slot for anything important. I didn’t really wind up needing it though I did wind up having a back-up slot for a kid activity. The 7-year-old was supposed to go to karate on Tuesday and somehow that did not happen. I took him on Thursday instead, so it was good that Thursday was fairly light for activities.

Rule #6 is “One big adventure, one little adventure.” This week’s big adventure was a Saturday trip to Hawk Mountain. (For 6/7 of us — the middle schooler was on a Boy Scout backpacking trip.) I saw that they were showing documentaries in their outdoor amphitheater so we went up in the afternoon to do a 1-hour hike, watched the documentary (well, some of it…some of the little ones had to go off and play in the woods) and then we ate at Olive Garden on the drive back toward home. My little adventure could be one of a few things — I went for a short walk on Friday at Stoneleigh, a historic grounds/garden a few miles from my house. It’s open to the public and free, but it always takes an extra nudge to do something like that. I put it on the list for the week and did it! But I could also have chosen the happy hour I went to Wednesday night – I hadn’t done something like that in a while so it was a different sort of adventure.

Rule #7 is “Take one night for you.” My weekly choir practice fits this nicely. Whatever is happening with work or with the family on Thursday, it’s nice to know that in the evening I will be focusing on something else entirely. It’s like a mental cleanse.

Rule #8 is “Batch the little things.” I make a “Friday punch list” during the week of things that are not terribly important but do need to get done. So on Friday I was a busy bee hanging curtains, repairing a mug, mailing checks and change-of-address notes, paying for field trips online, filling out forms for a fundraiser, etc. It doesn’t take that long, and it’s nice to not have these things cluttering up my mental landscape the rest of the week.

Finally, rule #9 is “Effortful before effortless.” The idea is to do some form of “effortful” leisure (reading, hobbies, etc.) before screen time. And here I pretty much failed miserably. What can I say. I’m having trouble finding books I want to read right now on my Kindle app in small bits of time. On one level my reading life looks really good this year, as I’m reading through all the works of Shakespeare. I’m currently on Act IV of Hamlet. But that takes 10-15 minutes at the pace I am reading, and then there are a lot of spots to fill during the day. I did listen to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring in the car, so I guess that was something.

Anyway, stay tuned for more of these over the next few months!

On the other hand, the future is to some degree unknowable. Pandemics and wars can upend whole societies. On an individual level, accidents and illnesses can change life overnight. Unforeseen good events can happen too — a dream job offer in a different city, for instance.

I feel like sometimes these things get presented as either/or. Planning is a futile attempt to ignore or at least push forward our mortality! We should just live in the moment! Or people tell ridiculous tales of having planned out their entire lives — writing a note to their 50-something self at age 20 and it has all come true! We hear about it because some of it did happen; when it doesn’t, people don’t talk about it.

But life is seldom either/or. Instead, here’s a better way to think about it: Hold the far future loose; hold the near future close. 

The far future is the place for general hopes and dreams. This is one reason I love the List of 100 Dreams exercise. You brainstorm all kinds of desires, without holding yourself to any of them. What would be cool to do or have in life? How might it be meaningful to spend one’s days and years? One envisions possibilities.

The near future, on the other hand, is where the real work happens. This is where desires get turned into reality. I think of the next 1-2 years as an active document where I am planing steps to make things come to fruition.

In my talks I recommend an exercise of writing a prospective job performance review, and thinking about what you might be recounting at a future holiday party. It’s March now. If you were giving yourself a professional performance review in December 2022, what would you like to say you’ve done? If you were at a party in December 2022 sharing tales of what you did in your personal life over the course of the year, what would you like to be saying? To some degree, this could be done for 2023 too. I’ve been planning out trips for 2023 for instance. I am thinking about my next book. And whatever reading project will follow 2021’s War and Peace and 2022’s Shakespeare.

For near-future desires, active planning is critical. A research project and book won’t magically come to be out of living in the present and following one’s day-to-day whimsy. I have to plot out the steps and timeline. To be sure, life is still unknowable in the sense that major events could change everything. But you can start to see probabilities a bit more clearly, and there are also plenty of things that won’t happen without planning. You’re not going to do an extended family trip to an international destination without a lot of advance planning, for instance. It still might not happen with the planning but it definitely won’t happen without it.

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….

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…

Longtime readers know that I’ve been tracking my time on weekly spreadsheets for approximately 6.5 years. That’s well over 300 weekly logs. I analyzed the first few quite closely, but after a while, they began serving more of a journal function than anything else (I’m not immediately adding up how much time I spend on, say, housework or driving each week). Since the week goes Monday at 5:00 a.m. to Sunday (well, really Monday morning) at 4:30 a.m., I’d generally finish the previous week’s log when I sat down at my desk on Monday morning and then archive it. Then I’d open a new, blank one.

I was doing this in a cursory fashion until recently, when I realized that I could do this ritual more mindfully. Life is a circus here, but on the other hand, we have a lot of good systems, and I’m making a lot of conscious choices about my time. It’s good to take a moment on Monday morning to reflect on everything that happened in the previous week. If nothing else, it’s good to see if I’m following the Tranquility by Tuesday rules whose adoption corresponded with statistically significant boosts in time satisfaction for other people!  Am I going to bed at close to the same time most nights? Am I running, and having family meals, at least three times per week each? (“Three times a week is a habit.”) Am I having one big adventure and one little adventure? (Or more?)

This past week was really good for all that. I did my editing retreat in Cape May, which meant I did two walks on some birding trails, and ran on the beach twice. My husband and I did our long-planned double art museum date night on Friday — we made it to the Barnes and the Philadelphia Art Museum and even squeezed in a quick sushi stop after. We had a family waffle breakfast on Sunday and then drove to Hawk Mountain to hike in the pretty fall leaves. By planning this ahead, we knew to get up on time to fit the trip and the hike in before the kid activities began at 2 p.m.

All of this served to make time feel rich and full. Indeed, it felt so expansive that I was trying to even think back to the beginning of the week when I took one kid to a try-it-out fencing class (he likes it…so that will be his new physical activity now that baseball is ending for the season). That seemed like ages ago. It is all a reminder of how vast 168 hours can be.

Anyway, I know most people don’t keep time logs (though it’s worth trying!). However, most people do have calendars, and some have planners, or journals, or other such record keeping materials. It might be worth building a few minutes into the schedule early each week to reflect on the week that was. Hopefully it will be a moment for gratitude — reminding yourself how much you accomplished, and of the fun you had. But if it wasn’t a great week, then the reflection can serve a more practical purpose. What could change? Maybe some things can’t, but if some things can, that’s helpful to know.

Time keeps passing one way or another. Reviewing the week that was lets us pause as the water goes under the bridge. It’s waving it on its way, thanking the time for what it gave, rather than having it disappear, unacknowledged, into the past.

However, the good news is that much does still fit. I was reminded of that this weekend. We had various things that needed to happen at certain times. We hosted my daughter’s birthday party on Friday afternoon at a paint-your-own-pottery place. We had an appointment Saturday mid-day for the 12-year-old to get his second Covid shot. We had a soccer game on Saturday afternoon, I was singing in church on Sunday morning, and then there was a host of Sunday afternoon things: a 3 p.m. Cub Scout meeting, a 4 p.m. baseball game, a 5 p.m. tennis lesson.

Looking at this, I saw that there were still two fairly open stretches of daylight time: Saturday morning, and Sunday between church and the 3 p.m. Cub Scout event.

So we decided to go to the Boo at the Zoo on Saturday morning. Only the 10-year-old dressed up, but everyone collected candy + snacks (including the toddler who discovered a new love of yogurt-covered raisins). My husband had gotten us tickets to a bird feeding experience, so that was memorable — we all held out our meal worms and got to see the birds in action up close.

Then we proceeded to get stuck in a wretched traffic jam leaving the zoo garage. But! We just all went together to the 12-year-old’s appointment instead of stopping by home, with several of us going to the nearby grocery store and then all meeting up there. The 10-year-old was unhappy that this change of plans meant she only had 30 minutes at home before I took her to her soccer game, but I reminded her that she had from 4 p.m. until bedtime as relaxing time. That’s not exactly a small amount! I ran for the first 30 minutes (during her pre-game practice) and then watched her make several saves as goalie. We made it to the car approximately 30 seconds before the rain started pouring down.

As for the window between church and Cub Scouts, this was enough time to go for a bike ride (an item on my fall fun list!). We did part of the trail in Valley Forge (across the river from the main part of the park). This family activity did not exactly go perfectly either. Somehow, the original process of loading bikes on the bike rack and into the trunk of the other car did not involve counting bikes. When we got to the trail, we discovered that the 10-year-old’s bike had not made it into either car. But! In a stroke of luck similar to the soccer game timing, we had thrown two bikes into the car for the 6-year-old because he was throwing a fit about riding the bigger one that now fits him (which has pink on it…because it had been his big sister’s). So he and she both rode bikes that were slightly too small for them but were serviceable. We did about 8 miles in perfect fall weather through lovely leaves, with only a little bit of unhappiness (someone slipped on a muddy patch).

This upcoming weekend should be easier because all the activities are concentrated on one day, leaving the other mostly open. As for this past weekend, even if parts did feel a bit full, there was still open space, and it was nice to have memories of zooming through those fall leaves even with everything else going on.

Photo: Enjoying some weekend downtime

Fall is spectacular, but it is also fleeting. Blink with the busyness of work and kid activities and you can miss the peak loveliness. So creating a Fall Fun List helps keep me accountable. These are the things I want to do to best enjoy the season. (Note: We have already gone apple picking! My favorite Honeycrisp apples turned out to be a late August harvest. However, there may be another opportunity….)

Visit the beach. Seeing the Maine coast over Labor Day weekend — as the first hints of fall color appeared on vines and underbrush — reminded me how beautiful seaside scenery can be off-season. I will probably go to Cape May for a day but it might be elsewhere.

Go to Hawk Mountain. We’ll be able to see the bird migrations and fall scenery in one place. I will accept another Pocono destination as a substitute.

Do fall puzzles. I have a few on order already — free thanks to my Amazon rewards points… Maybe I will work on them while sipping apple ciders or fall-themed craft beers. So that means finding some fun fall beverages (not pumpkin spice lattes — not my thing).

Enjoy some fall-themed art. I will do my research and figure out which fall paintings are in the local art museums. And I can listen to fall-themed music. Maybe read a fall-themed book? I would love to find some fall-themed children’s books to read with the 6-year-old, as our bedtime reading has felt a bit stale. I welcome suggestions!

Take a family bike ride. We now have four independent bikers!

Do the family photo shoot and print up some photos. I’d also like to use some of my own fall photos as art in the new house — so I need to take fall photos.

Do some morning runs. I can usually do one weekend morning, and the way we’re setting up the weekday schedule it’s possible I’ll be able to do a weekday or two as well. I’m running a half-marathon very soon.

Decorate with mums. This is a must as we will probably be listing the house during peak fall color season, so it would be good to have the outside look nice. (I need to declutter/clean the house in general…but this is a fall not-fun item). I also want to learn the names of several fall-blooming wildflowers, so I can identify them.

Go leaf-peeping in upstate New York. My little brother is hosting an in-person wedding celebration this fall (he and his wife got married in a Zoom ceremony last December) and so we’ll be in northern New York during one of the peak October weekends. They’ve already got apple picking and cider on the schedule.

Procure adorable Halloween costumes plenty in advance. Go to at least one community Halloween event (we went to a ton last fall…because I didn’t want the kids to realize they weren’t officially trick-or-treating).

NaNoWriMo? Maybe? Anyone else in….? I might have my next time management book mostly edited by November. Maybe a fall-themed novel…

What’s on your fall fun list?

In other news: We got four kids on three different buses yesterday morning. The toddler went out to see each of them off, and he wanted to go on the bus too! The mornings are long but so far going OK. This morning my husband drove the high schooler to school, but apparently the car line was absolutely ridiculous.

Today’s house decision is which color to use for the master bedroom closet. There is a huge price differential between “summer breeze” and “casting at first light.” I’m thinking maybe I go cheap(er – nothing home-related seems cheap these days) and spend the difference on nice clothes to go in the closet…

Photo: Maine, with just the tiniest hint of fall color

That means I am…done for now. A first draft exists. I have not written a conclusion yet, but that will be short, and since it will mostly be based on the 3-month follow up results (which just came in) that can be done along with incorporating my editor’s feedback.

I guess I should celebrate, though honestly it feels a little anti-climactic. I liked reading through the drafts — generally a good sign — and I do think this book will be helpful to people. It’s also going to be roughly a year until it lands on shelves so I need to pace my excitement.

But hey, when first drafts are done, that means something exists. It is much easier to turn something into something better than it is to turn nothing into something. I’m happy to report that the writing timeline I created worked more or less as planned. I would write a few chapters in a row, one each week, then take a week off to edit. Starting with the introduction being due May 28, this meant that I finished chapter 9 this week, as planned, taking off the two weeks I was on vacation this summer. My official manuscript deadline is October 1st, so that gives me another month for edits.

Then I’ll need to spend the next year figuring out how to build the audience for the book. That is an entirely different sort of work, and less my preference than writing, but part of the package. Although I write first for an audience of one (would I like this book?) having an audience of only one would be a bit of a let-down. So, onward! And maybe something bubbly some night this week…

I am not so sure. While I understand the appeal — you just get it done! It’s not weighing on you! — there are downsides. Among them:

— Are you sure that task is only going to take 2 minutes? Few people are master time estimators. Something that only takes a minute seems harmless enough, but if it winds up being a 10-minute task, that can start becoming a major distraction from what you originally intended to do with the time.

— Are you sure you will immediately resume what you were doing or planned to do with a block of time? Many people cycle through various ease-into-work activities whenever they stop doing something. It occurs to you to send an email. You go do that — it will only take 2 minutes! — but then, hey, look, there are new shiny unopened emails in your inbox….

— Life can disappear into 2-minute tasks. We live in a distracted world, and concentrated blocks of time can be hard to come by. Letting these chunks get chopped up for any reason can limit what you can accomplish.

My general rule is to “batch the little things.” Each week, I make what I call a Friday punch list. This list includes things like filling out forms, paying bills that aren’t on auto pay, signing contracts, responding to emails that aren’t urgent but will require a bit of thought, making travel arrangements, etc. I recognize that many things require a faster response than once a week, but making a punch list of little things for each work day could also work. Designate a time to tackle this list. Ideally, this will be a low-energy time. Maybe it’s the 30 minute before or after a lunch break, or at 2:30 p.m. when your energy dips.

It shouldn’t be first thing in the morning — which sounds like batching, but is better referred to as “clearing the decks.” I see this all the time on work time logs. You have 8 things on your list for the day. One is big and complex and will take a lot of time. The other 7 are smaller. Many might only require a few minutes. So, why not tackle all the little stuff first, so you feel like you’re making progress and everything is getting crossed off the list?

The problem is that we all run out of steam. You start the list of little things at 8 a.m., and by the time you’re done with them, and the various things that result because of them (someone calls you back, or gets back to you with something you feel you should respond to…) maybe it’s 9:45 and oh look, I have a 10 a.m. meeting, and then when you’re done with that at 11:15 you cycle through email checks and other ease-into-work activities, and then you’re hungry for lunch, and then after lunch you’re kind of tired and… Tackle the big thing from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., though, and you might make real progress on that. Then the little things could all get done in that 11:15 to lunch window and during your afternoon slump.

When I suggested the “Batch the little things” rule to my Tranquility by Tuesday project participants, a few people mentioned that if they didn’t do the little thing immediately, it would keep weighing on them. I think as long as you designate a particular time to tackle something, this need not be true. Many people who mentioned this challenge turned out to be keeping a mental list of tasks they needed to get done. Don’t keep the punch list in your head! Write it down somewhere! And give it a time. Most of us don’t obsess about a dentist appointment that’s on the calendar for Thursday morning at 8 a.m. — we know it will probably happen at that time. Same thing for a task. If you know you will fill out that form on Thursday at 2:30 p.m., then you can stop thinking about it until then. There is a time for that form…and now is not that time.

Do you batch the little things?

*This version of the 2-minute rule is different from the Atomic Habits 2-minute rule, which says (roughly) that when you start a new habit, the habit should only take 2 minutes to do.

Photo: From Longwood Gardens over the weekend. We went to the fireworks and fountain performance, which was pretty spectacular!