Since I posted last night, I worked on my puzzle from 7:30-8. I decided to take a bubble bath since the 5-year-old was occupied. However, he was not as occupied as I thought, and I wound up getting out fairly quickly when he was yelling outside the door. Then eventually I went outside from about 9:15-9:55 p.m. to shovel snow on the driveway. I was doing this with my 15-year-old (he and my husband did a shift earlier) and we managed to get it all clear. I came back in, read the 5-year-old a story and got him down by 10:30 (hey, no school the next morning). I scrolled and relaxed for 30 minutes and was in bed at 11.

I printed out my log from last week as I do most Monday mornings. I also looked up the corresponding log from the last time that January 13th was a Monday (2020). My life looked a little different then, as I had a 3-week old baby. Obviously a lot of time was spent caring for him, but with four other kids, there’s still a lot of other stuff too. For instance, I went to a middle school choir concert…

Anyway, this past week was pretty good, and fairly typical as these things go. I worked 37 hours, which is right in the 35-40 I tend to average. I did not count my Monday driving as work (except for the hour in the car I practiced my talk on the way to the talk) — I recognize that this is debatable, but to me, listening to music in the car is not work, even if I was on my way to/from work. I do see that my work days often get a bit chopped up, and this is something I’m working on, especially as I’m entering crunch time for my book manuscript. I need long stretches to work. It is somewhat within my power to make that happen, so I should when I can. But hey, 37 hours was enough time to give a speech, turn in my Author Questionnaire (with stuff like the “flap copy” for my next book), run this challenge, record 4 BB podcasts plus 4 longer interviews for that show, write my newsletters, do final edits on a piece in the WSJ, etc.

I slept 51.5 hours, which comes out to approximately 7.4 hours per day. This will surprise no one who has been following my time tracking saga for lo these many years.

I ran about 11 miles, spread over 4 workouts. Two of my treadmill running sessions also featured my resistance training (I’d run for 5 minutes, do some weights, run for 5 minutes, do some weights). I did a 5 mile long run outside on Saturday. I worked out with my trainer on Tuesday. On the other days, I did some short walks. According to my phone, I averaged 11,759 steps per day over the last 7 days.

I spent 3 hours practicing singing (2 choir practices, plus one on my own). I spent only 15 minutes playing the piano. That’s something I might try to increase.

However, I did not lack for leisure time. I spent 4.5 hours doing puzzles! Some of this was while simultaneously supervising children, but hey. I spent 1.25 hours doing Legos with my 5-year-old.

In terms of little adventures, I went to the art museum on Saturday. I took 4 children out to Olive Garden on Wednesday.

I hope you had an excellent week! Let me know how it went.

Photo: Snow this morning…the hammock looks a little less appealing in this state! 

Anyway, I worked until 5:30 p.m. yesterday, then worked on my puzzle for 30 minutes, serenaded by the 15-year-old’s alto sax lesson. B left at 6 p.m., so I went and hung out with the 5-year-old while he played Roblox. The lesson ended at 6:30, and then I got the kids organized and took 4/5ths of them (minus the 17-year-old) out to Olive Garden to celebrate the 10-year-old’s birthday. This was about a 15 minute drive. We ate from 7-8:15 (it took me a while to figure out that we were supposed to pay at the little tablet at the table; what can I say, it’s been a while since I’ve been to an Olive Garden! But the kids could all get something they liked and my salad and pasta were just fine so yay). Then I drove them all home, arriving 8:30 p.m.

This is normally “in room with no devices” time. But since we had been out to dinner so long I allowed everyone extra time. The 10-year-old called his video gaming friend in CA, and they played together for a bit. I had to help the 17-year-old print something for a competition in a very exact way. Eventually I got the 5-year-old to go to his room, and I read him a story (Bear Snores On) and sat with him until he conked out (at which point he snored on…). I got the 10-year-old into his bed. It was an exciting night because we changed from our old goodnight ritual, which involved 9 quick hugs, 9 quick kisses, a bonus hug, and a bonus kiss. Now we are up to 10! I think we started this when he was 6 or 7. So that was cute…and then I remembered the trash.

This is a Wednesday night thing, and is normally my husband’s chore, but he was gone, so I got the 15-year-old and the two of us dragged three trash cans and two recycling bins (“comingled” week) down to the curb. It was very very cold, but it was nice to have company. I made it back in around 10:15 p.m., worked on the puzzle for 30 minutes and finished (see photo), then got ready for bed 10:45. I was in my bed 11/11:10 and asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.

I woke up at 4:30 but managed to get back to sleep. So then I was up with the alarm at 6:40. I got the 13-year-old up, took my shower, and got her in the van and down to the bus stop. 19 degrees! I came back, woke up the 15-year-old, ate, chatted with B when she showed up, then worked for about 15-20 minutes until it was time to drive the 15-year-old to school. Normally the 17-year-old does this, but he has a “free” first period on “A” days – the upshot is that he goes in an hour later every fourth day. Meaning his brother has to get to school in some other fashion. Since he had to take his alto sax back to school today, I agreed to drive him. We left at 8, and I made it back at 8:22. I got the 17-year-old up and worked in my husband’s office because the cleaners were here doing mine.

I worked straight through from 8:30-12:30, more or less. One fun hour of this was spent looking back through my entire 2024 logs for something I’m writing. The one interruption was a call to the pediatrician’s office (they never did call me back yesterday) to the nurse’s line. I left a message for them with a live person this time and a promise that I would be called back.

I practiced choir music from 12:30-1. My church choir is singing Howells’ An English Mass and it is a beast. I do like Howells, so I guess I’ll be spending a lot of time with him! (A note: I would like “Take Him Earth, for Cherishing” sung at my funeral, maybe with some language changes to “her,” but it needs to be sung well, so likely with a small professional chamber choir). I did some more work from 1-2 (with a small interruption to talk to the nurse- booking a visit for my kid for tomorrow, and heat up leftovers in the microwave; I ate at my desk), then did a Before Breakfast podcast interview from 2-2:30. I was really glad this one happened because it had been rescheduled from last week when this person was evacuated from her house in Los Angeles. Very scary – she and her family are back and all right. I dealt with the sound files from 2:30-2:45, then put on my exercise clothes.

I did my combo treadmill/strength workout upstairs. This involves running 2 miles on the treadmill in 4-5 minute spurts, and then doing various strength/resistance exercises in the interludes. It’s less boring than trying to run miles on a treadmill. Also, I listened to Kathleen Paley’s Minimalish Mom podcast episode on travel points hacking. At 3:25 p.m. I changed and freshened up, then chatted with B and the 5-year-old, who were in the kitchen. At 3:45 I went to my office with the intention of working, but B went to go get the 10-year-old from the bus stop, so the 5-year-old wound up with me, and so we hung out for a little bit. She was back in a few minutes and they went up to do Legos, and so I decided to post this before getting back to figuring out what people will want to know about how I spent the 8784 hours of 2024. (Normally a year has 8760 hours, but it was a leap year.) I spent more than one of those 8784 hours waiting in line for the Haunted Mansion at Disney. Good times.

I hope your time tracking is going well! Here’s the past day in log form.

Wednesday

5 pm work
5:30 puzzle
6 hangout H/video, check S
6:30 kids ready, to Olive Garden
7 Olive Garden/A’s b-day
7:30 Olive Garden/A’s b-day
8 Olive Garden, home
8:30 kids, J printing, etc.
9 kids, H ready, stories, out
9:30 A down, kids, trash!!
10 trash (S), puzzle
10:30 puzzle, ready bed
11 in bed/sleep

Thursday

4:30 up, bathroom, sleep

6:30 6:40 up, R, shower
7 get R’s stuff, van, S
7:30 b-fast, B chat, work
8 drive S, home
8:30 work (some boys)
9 work
9:30 work
10 work
10:30 snack, work
11 work (page through logs)
11:30 work (logs)
12 work
12:30 music practice
1 work, book doc visit, lunch
1:30 work
2 work (BB)
2:30 work/files, ready, run
3 weights/run (2.0), change/freshen up
3:30 chat BP/H, H entertain
4 work

There are always the usual stunners. People sleep a reasonable amount. In 2021, the average person slept 8.95 hours per day. Since the ATUS covers people over age 15, that number includes teens and retirees. However, even very busy folks do sleep. The average employed woman with kids under age 6 slept 8.61 hours/day, with employed fathers of young kids sleeping 8.42 hours. How is this possible? While there is probably some time spent falling asleep or being up in the middle of the night, that’s not going to be 2 hours per day for most people (and long stretches of time awake would be picked up in the way the survey is done). Instead, to think about this, it might help to multiply these numbers by 7 to obtain a weekly tally — probably people don’t sleep 8.61 hours on a Tuesday, but add in weekend sleep, holiday sleep, naps, crashing on the couch, sleeping through an alarm or hitting snooze, etc., and the number will be higher than the general mental picture of a typical day.

The ATUS picks up big societal shifts — and one of the biggest in the past few years is the rise of remote work. In 2021, on the days they worked, 38 percent of employed people did some or all of their work at home, and 68 percent did some or all of their work at their workplace. In 2019, these numbers were 24 percent and 82 percent, respectively. That’s a 14 percentage point shift in people completely leaving the office on whatever workday they were surveyed.

Now maybe 14 percentage points doesn’t sound so huge, but keep in mind that some jobs need to be done at a workplace. It is hard to drive a truck from home, or be a waitress from home. Since those categories of work couldn’t see a huge shift, the shift is concentrated in other categories. And sure enough, this has been an uneven revolution. The ATUS reports that on the days they worked, 59 percent of those in management, business and financial operations occupations, and 57 percent of those in professional and related occupations did some or all of their work at home. Among people with an advanced degree, 67 percent did some or all of their work at home, vs. 19 percent of those with a high school diploma.

There’s lots to unpack in the data, which looks at how men and women spend their time, and how people who have kids at home and do not have kids at home spend their time, and how being employed affects how people spend their time. The American Time Use Survey is one of the big things that drove my initial interest in time. At first, I wanted to write about various shifts in time use for various demographics, but the wiser marketing advice was to write about time management. Still…I find the numbers fascinating!