Friday Archives - Laura Vanderkam https://lauravanderkam.com/tag/friday/ Writer, Author, Speaker Fri, 07 Feb 2025 16:27:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://lauravanderkam.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/cropped-site-icon-2-32x32.png Friday Archives - Laura Vanderkam https://lauravanderkam.com/tag/friday/ 32 32 145501903 Friday round-up https://lauravanderkam.com/2025/02/friday-round-up-2/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2025/02/friday-round-up-2/#comments Fri, 07 Feb 2025 16:27:45 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19922 My kids had a snow day yesterday…with no actual snow. I will admit there was some freezing rain in the morning, but by noon it was about 40 degrees and everything was melting off. This profligacy with snow days won’t make us have to make-up days in June because from now on all snow days will be virtual instruction days, but still. Given that the weather forecast calls for more snow soon and I imagine that if the Eagles win on Sunday there will be a lot of suspiciously absent people on Monday or any parade days… we may have very limited instruction days!

Fortunately we had childcare from about 9:15, so I was able to get most of my work done. Three of the five children saw Dogman. I finished a draft of a book chapter. I did a podcast interview. I am getting close to caught up on my time tracking emails (this was a project…I’m so glad that we had 1600+ people tracking their time in January but it has taken me longer than I’d like to get back to everyone).

Some content from this week…Over at Before Breakfast, I had episodes on “The case for a winter walk” and “Carpooling isn’t just for kids.” For the longer episode I interviewed Mary Laura Philpott about “Being patient until the right idea comes.” She talks about how she’s had a gentle year creatively as she figures out her next project. She’s approaching the process with curiosity, rather than a sense of hustle. There are turtle metaphors. Please check it out!

Over at Vanderhacks, I piggybacked on Groundhog Day and the associated movie to ask “Would you live today over again?” Related: “How to enjoy 6 more weeks of winter.” I suggested people “Try a 30-minute closet triage” and “How to (finally) make progress on your personal to-do list” (those two are behind the paywall).

The Best of Both Worlds Patreon community had a fun discussion of the best jeans (I have been informed that this was an expensive thread). We also talked early money memories, and favorite TV shows. Membership is $9/month (you can join here).

Thanks for supporting my writing and podcasting! I appreciate it. In the meantime, a tongue-in-cheek sonnet about big game football…

Some sixty thousand people in the stands
All scream alike as seconds tick to none.
The lights glow green, the crowd is slapping hands
confetti flutters, people start to run,

as fireworks explode into the air.
The players rush the field, their helmets tossed.
In this cold night, the revelers will dare
to claim that all is changed from if they’d lost.

And yet, a few blocks over, someone else
sits in her condo, watching Netflix, sure,
that nothing else has happened, and she tells
her friend that it’s a boring night, and you’re

on your way over right? Oh yes, I’ll try.
I see some traffic — but I don’t know why.

Photo: A different sort of bird, through the car window. Note: no snow.

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Friday miscellany: December weeks https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/12/friday-miscellany-december-weeks/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/12/friday-miscellany-december-weeks/#comments Fri, 13 Dec 2024 08:07:13 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19842 I spent a lot of time Monday going through the lists of what I’ve bought everyone for Christmas, and organizing things into what is being wrapped and what is potentially coming through other gift delivery systems. Some stuff has not arrived yet, so always good to figure this out so it can be tracked down. I started the wrapping project. Each child gets different wrapping paper, and everyone is going to unwrap 7 gifts. (To be clear — some of these are small. They don’t get 7 big gifts!).

It is…a lot of work. I’ve also been working hard on learning my Bach for the B-Minor mass. I’m happy to report that at rehearsal on Monday I knew my notes cold. I never got lost, even in those long runs of crazy 5 or 6 part harmony where I’m in the middle of everything (second soprano line). Now the goal is to mostly be able to look up and to really be able to listen to everyone else.

I am really enjoying the music, though. Hopefully the music will sound like magic, remembering the line that “all magic is just labor, hidden well.” I suppose that is true of the writing of this piece three centuries ago too!

In the meantime, I went to one band concert this week, and I have another kid band concert and choir concert to go to next week. Today I read at the preschool to celebrate the 4-year-old’s upcoming birthday. That happens over the holiday break, so we’re celebrating ahead of time. This weekend there is a choir concert and breakfast with Santa and an office holiday party. And hopefully a little downtime for puzzles.

In the meantime, some of this week’s content….Over at Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter), I talked about “How to embrace the resolutions preseason” (that one’s behind the paywall). I also suggested that people “Find a micro-hobby” to celebrate their time confetti, and I wrote about how “Open space invites opportunity.” Please consider either a free or paid subscription!

Before Breakfast also had some holiday content, with a suggestion to “Give experiences,” and to “Remember to enjoy yourself.” (Worth noting this time of year!) I also interviewed the incredibly prolific romance and thriller novelist Sarina Bowen. She talked about how she gets ideas, keeps track of her ideas, and then executes on these ideas (to the tune of multiple bestselling books a year; her thriller The Five Year Lie recently hit #1 for thrillers on Audible). Please check that out too!

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Friday content round-up https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/10/friday-content-round-up-2/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/10/friday-content-round-up-2/#comments Fri, 04 Oct 2024 13:34:30 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19749 I was enjoying a little late night me-time last night as the kids don’t have to get up for school this morning (my district closes for the major Jewish holidays)…but then the little guy came and got me at 5:45 a.m. (something he almost never does anymore!) and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m triaging my schedule to get an afternoon nap if possible…

In the meantime…Before Breakfast continues to feature four short (new) tips each week plus a longer episode featuring an interview. This week’s interview was with novelist Camille Pagán. She talked about making time for creative work, and how inspiration tends to follow the work. We don’t get inspired and then sit down and write a novel (or anything else). We sit down regularly to write and then we get ideas. I know this is true for me. I also suggested that people “Don’t sweat the seconds” and that you might “Browse for a project.

The Vanderhacks newsletter continues to grow! Each week I share five ideas to make life better. This week I shared ideas to “Make journaling useful.” The post behind the paywall was about “How to lighten your mental load.

This week’s Best of Both Worlds episode on new routines, whining, and preschool vs. childcare was so fun for me that I listened to it twice. Check it out! In the meantime, the BOBW Patreon community has been discussing planning fatigue, and if there’s actually any upside to waiting to make holiday plans…which has become a discussion of people who plan vs. people who seem allergic to making plans (and how, if those folks aren’t living in chaos, it’s often because they’re relying on other people in their lives to figure things out…).

Thanks for reading/listening! I appreciate it.

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Friday content round-up https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/07/friday-content-round-up/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/07/friday-content-round-up/#comments Fri, 26 Jul 2024 14:30:08 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19658 Theoretically Fridays are supposed to be my open days, but somehow that didn’t happen this week. Oh well. So here’s a quick content round-up!

Over at Vanderhacks I wrote that “No one wins a misery contest” and that “Smart categories create variety.” Being creative about how you make your lists can nudge you to make better choices. The post behind the paywall was about “3 ways to make any work day more enjoyable.” Not all work is the same by any means, but I think these three strategies can make the vast majority of work days better.

The Before Breakfast podcast suggested that life might be better if we “Cultivate a Saturday vibe.” I suggested that “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.” For those who are looking to spend more time with friends and boost focus I suggested people try to “Work side by side.”

The Best of Both Worlds podcast was about rest and trading off. Over at the BOBW Patreon community page we’re discussing strategies one member can use while her husband will be away for 3 days every week for the next 3 months. We’re also sharing lists of things that are fun for us…and NOT fun for us (even if they are for other people). Please come join us!

Also, I write a weekly newsletter that comes out on Saturday’s (“A Week’s Worth”) and one that comes out monthly (“Just a Minute”) — the latter will be published August 1st. You can sign up for either/both here.

Finally, I was just reminiscing that 15 years ago I was putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of what became 168 Hours. Let me know if you’ve read it (and when!)

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Friday miscellany: Little summer adventures (and Bach) https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/06/friday-miscellany-little-summer-adventures-and-bach/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/06/friday-miscellany-little-summer-adventures-and-bach/#comments Fri, 28 Jun 2024 14:40:10 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19620 The heat hasn’t been quite as brutal this week, so I’ve had a few outdoor adventures. I walked with a friend through some nature trails on Monday, and ran with a friend along the Schuylkill River Trail this morning (it was lovely — about 62 degrees when we started! Almost cool!). I biked the SRT yesterday before surrendering the car to my 17-year-old who wanted to go meet friends. I have still not purchased a car. My husband is sending me links to various cars. I tend to be a total satisficer, but maybe it’s the fact that I’ve driven my current car for 13 years now…that’s a long time to live with a decision!

My husband and I had a short summer-y date night last night. We went to a beer garden (see: Summer Fun List) that was also on the Schuylkill River, in Bridgeport. This was a low key, nice place, and the beer and food were good and the summer night was great until a huge wind kicked up around 8:00 p.m. Fortunately we had to leave to go get a kid at parkour shortly thereafter so it was all good.

We are still figuring out what to do on our days off next week. I am wary of going into the week without a plan as I suspect if we wake up on those days and ask the kids what they want to do the answer will be…nothing. And it’s hard to get 7 people organized for much (or at least 4-5 people…I tend not to force the oldest kids to go to anything though they are welcome to!). My husband and I may also have slightly different ideas of what we want to do…

I spent some time this week creating the Bach listening calendar for the rest of the summer (in my project of listening to all of Bach in a year). The folks who are following this calendar are in for a treat in August. After wading through all the cantatas we get to the longer vocal masterworks, and we also have some great instrumental stuff that happens in the last 100 of the BWVs (which match up with how I’m organizing all this…). Let’s just say we get the St. Matthew Passion and then the Goldberg Variations back to back.

Anyway, on to this week’s content! Over at Before Breakfast, I shared some tips from Anna Goldfarb’s Modern Friendship book, including “Look for context friends,” and “Make invitations specific.” The latter is truly life-changing advice. “Let’s get together!” sometime, said to a potential new friend, is really hard to make work. Better to start with an actual activity that can be accepted, rejected, or negotiated, but gives everyone something to work with. I also note that “You can pivot.” Just as with media training, you don’t have to answer the actual question that was asked!

At the Best of Both Worlds Patreon page, we’ve been discussing our 2024 goals (how are we doing now, at mid-year?), and how to survive family road trips.

At Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter) we’ve been discussing tips to “Upgrade your packed lunches,” and the mantra that “This is when you get stronger,” that can help for motivation in difficult moments. The paywalled post was a “Golden Hours grab bag” of suggestions to make your evenings a lot more fun.

My weekly newsletter (“A week’s worth”) comes out Saturday mornings, and my monthly newsletter (“Just a Minute”) comes out next week at some point (generally near the first of the month). You can subscribe to both by clicking the appropriate boxes here.

Photo: Cheery food truck parked near the beer garden. It wasn’t open but I appreciated the color! 

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If you can’t work, plan https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/05/if-you-cant-work-plan/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/05/if-you-cant-work-plan/#comments Thu, 11 May 2023 17:39:25 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19133 We’ve all been there — low energy times when you’re having trouble making progress on anything. Maybe it’s the mid-afternoon slump. Maybe it’s a few days of feeling blah after an intense time at work or home.

If you can just take the time off and be gentle to yourself, great. But if that’s not going to happen, here’s another idea. If you can’t work, plan. Using low-energy time to think about what Future You could do can turn what might feel like wasted time into something more fruitful.

This realization is how Friday became my weekly planning day (see Tranquility by Tuesday Rule #2: Plan on Fridays). Many of us who work a Monday to Friday week are pretty much sliding into the weekend by Friday. It can be hard to start anything new, particularly after lunch. But I realized that I might be willing to think about what Future Me should be doing. It takes less effort to write “revise book proposal” on a planner page than it does to actually, you know, revise that book proposal. So I began creating the next week’s plans on Friday, trusting that Monday Morning Me would have more vim and vigor for these things than whatever I’d morphed into by Friday afternoon.

This insight can work for all kinds of planning. If you’re spinning your wheels on Thursday afternoon you could take a stab at a weekend plan. If you’re feeling like you’re banging your head against the wall you could regroup and write a Summer Fun List, or a List of 100 Dreams, or do something random like plan next year’s holiday vacation. Or plan something completely unrelated to your current slump… like next November’s podcast episode topics?

Perhaps the sense of devising a plan will feel energizing. That energy might help you get going on something else. But even if not, now you’ve got a plan for next weekend. Or a Summer Fun List. Or next November’s podcast line-up. Those are things that didn’t exist before, and probably should happen at some point. Productivity is all mental anyway. If you feel like you should be getting something done, and then you do get something done, whatever that something happens to be, that tends to register as a win.

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How to read more (more on Rule #9: Effortful before effortless) https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/how-to-read-more-more-on-rule-9-effortful-before-effortless/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/how-to-read-more-more-on-rule-9-effortful-before-effortless/#comments Wed, 22 Mar 2023 14:13:42 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19063 This week the Tranquility by Tuesday project is focusing on Rule #9: Effortful before effortless. Doing a little bit of mindful fun before switching over to passive screen consumption can drastically improve the experience of leisure time.

By far the most common form of “effortful fun” people choose is reading. This is wise, because reading can pretty easily fit into patches of leisure that are unplanned, uncertain in duration, or that happen at low energy times — the factors that lead people to reach for their phones (or binge Netflix all night). For people who spend 2 hours of leisure time on various screens per day (not that unusual — much of it unnoticed in 10 minute scrolling bits), devoting half of this to reading means an extra hour a day, or seven hours a week. If you read 40 pages per hour, that gets you an extra book a week right there. Not that there’s anything particularly virtuous about posting an impressive book tally BUT reading 50 more books a year would definitely open up a lot of reading possibilities.

Making this switch — and hence reading quite a bit more — involves doing a few things.

Make it easy to read. Some people always have a print book with them, but for most of us this means making peace with ebooks, and (sorry!) even ebooks read on a phone. Is it ideal? No. But putting the Kindle or Nook app, or Apple’s Books app on your phone means that you can read a book anytime you have your phone with you. Which is probably all the time.

Always have books available. For those of us whose libraries have entered the digital age, an easy way to do this is to use the Libby app and borrow lots of ebooks from your local library. You can put holds on popular books the same way you would with physical books, but lots of back list titles will probably be available immediately. Or…

Put money into it. Price wise, ebooks are the new paperbacks. If you want to read more, you want to have appealing books available. You can download an ebook to an app instantly for usually less than $20. Buying a new ebook every other week or so just might make reading more appealing. Pro tip: If you’re unsure whether you’ll like a book, download the free sample first. I have been saved a few times from buying a real dud this way!

Go with what you like. We’ve talked in the past here about how few more books any of us are going to read in life. Even if you read 100 books a year and live for 50 more years, that’s only 5000 more titles you will read. And to be honest, both of those numbers are optimistic estimates for many of us. You will never make it through thousands of books you’d love. So don’t waste your time on things you aren’t really drawn to. If a friend or reviewer whose taste you trust recommends something outside your normal tastes, absolutely try it out BUT if you know you hate false accusation stories…just don’t bother.

Feel free to lower the energy level. For really low-energy times you might have some more accessible reading available. I like magazines, and sometimes I’ve read books of very short essays, or joke books or comic books because I can’t deal with a full page of text. Pro tip: You can borrow magazines through the Libby app. So you don’t even need to subscribe or visit a news stand! And finally…

Read first, but it doesn’t have to be forever. The point of the “effortful before effortless” fun rule is not to banish all effortless fun. It’s to change the balance, so busy people don’t spend all their precious leisure time on things that aren’t necessarily as rejuvenating as they might have hoped. So if you find it hard to get going on reading, tell yourself you only have to read for two minutes. Two minutes feels like nothing! Then you can binge Netflix or go on an Instagram bender all night if you want. Most of the time you’ll likely read longer, but if not, oh well. Reading for two minutes five times a day during those little spots of time that pop up still means reading for another ten minutes a day…which isn’t nothing. That’s probably about how much time it’s taking me to read through all the works of Jane Austen this year.

How do you make time to read?

In other news: This rule to do “Effortful before effortless” fun comes from Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. If you haven’t read a copy of the book yet, please do! You can request it from your library or download the ebook from major retailers immediately and make it your effortful fun today 🙂

 

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Tranquility by Tuesday Challenge, Rule #9: Effortful before effortless https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/tranquility-by-tuesday-challenge-rule-9-effortful-before-effortless/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/tranquility-by-tuesday-challenge-rule-9-effortful-before-effortless/#comments Fri, 17 Mar 2023 12:52:01 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19054 Welcome to the last week of the Tranquility by Tuesday Challenge! This next week’s rule is Rule #9: Effortful before effortless. This rule is all about making leisure time feel more satisfying.

Even the busiest people have some leisure time. The problem is that it is often unpredictable, short in duration, or happens at low-energy times (like at night after the kids go to bed). Screen time fits these constraints incredibly well. Most people have their phones with them at all times, and you can scroll online for 2 minutes or 2 hours. You don’t have to plan ahead to watch Netflix.

The result is that screen time winds up consuming the bulk of people’s leisure time. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little online or TV-style fun. But many busy people also lament that they have too little time to read, do hobbies, etc. So there needs to be some way to repurpose low-quality leisure time for these higher quality pursuits.

The answer is Rule #9: Effortful before effortless. Commit to doing just a minute or two of “effortful fun” (reading, hobbies, crafts, connecting) before switching over to “effortless fun” (generally social media, scrolling, TV, etc.).

A few minutes doesn’t seem like a huge ask, so this strategy can feel pretty doable. But one of two things winds up happening. Often times, people get so into their effortful fun that they never switch over. You want to find out what happens in that mystery novel and you never wind up over at Facebook. Oh well! It will still be there next time.

But even if you do read for ten minutes and then go binge watch something the rest of the night, at least you’ve gotten to do both kinds of fun, and that can make leisure time feel far more balanced.

So, this week, think about what sorts of “effortful” fun you like to do. I enjoy puzzles, reading magazines, and reading books (not all great books…plenty of mindless fodder in there too). I try to keep ebooks on my phone so I can read those in little bits of time. I’ve set up my dining room table to be a puzzle station and generally have a 1000-piece puzzle going at any point.

Figure out how you can make your fun accessible, and then, when a spot of time opens up, challenge yourself to do one of these effortful forms of fun for just a little bit. This seems simple, but it can have a huge effect. In the Tranquility by Tuesday project (the subject of my most recent book), agreement scores with the statement “Yesterday I didn’t waste time on things that weren’t important to me” rose 32 percent over the course of the study. Not bad — especially for people whose lives didn’t suggest a lot of wasted time in the first place!

In other news: Wondering why the TBT week starts on Friday? It’s because of Rule #2: Plan on Friday. You can read more about that here.

Check out this TBT In Real Life video of how one busy woman decided to spend more time on effortful fun, rather than the effortless variety.

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Thursday reflections on Rule #8: Batch the little things https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/thursday-reflections-on-rule-8-batch-the-little-things/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/thursday-reflections-on-rule-8-batch-the-little-things/#respond Thu, 16 Mar 2023 13:08:29 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19051 This week, the Tranquility by Tuesday Challenge has been focusing on Rule #8: Batch the little things. Creating a small window for administrative tasks and chores keeps them from taking over our lives.

Here are some questions to help you reflect on the past week:

  • Think back over the past week. What times did you designate for little tasks during your workdays?
  • What windows did you designate for household tasks and chores?
  • What effect did you see in your life from batching the little things?
  • What challenges did you face in trying to batch the little things? How did you address these challenges?
  • If you modified this rule, how did you do so?
  • How likely are you to continue batching the little things in your life?

As we hurtle toward the last week of this Tranquility by Tuesday Challenge, it’s also worth reflecting on the previous rules:

  • Did you observe a bedtime this past week?
  • Did you plan on Friday? (And is planning on your to-do list for tomorrow?)
  • Did you move by 3 p.m. most days?
  • Did you do your chosen activity three times per week?
  • Did you create a back-up slot, or build more open space generally into your schedule?
  • Did you have one big adventure and one little adventure this past week?
  • Did you take one night for you?

I’ll be back with the final rule from Tranquility by Tuesday tomorrow!

In other news: Sarah and I talked a bit about batching the little things in order to reduce transition time in our most recent episode of the Best of Both Worlds podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet, please do!

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Reducing mental load, but not waiting for the perfect time (more on Rule #8: Batch the little things) https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/reducing-mental-load-but-not-waiting-for-the-perfect-time-more-on-rule-8-batch-the-little-things/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2023/03/reducing-mental-load-but-not-waiting-for-the-perfect-time-more-on-rule-8-batch-the-little-things/#comments Wed, 15 Mar 2023 12:54:37 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19048 In Monday’s blog post I talked a little bit about mental load. I have personally been thinking a lot about this topic lately. I am working on revising a novel and I also want to think about my next non-fiction book idea. Both of these require a lot of mental space.

Ideally, I would go off to a cabin in the woods somewhere (well, perhaps to the beach somewhere) and work on these things for the next month. I might pop home for a day or two here and there to say hello to everyone but other people would be managing all the details fabulously. Not only would all the logistics be flawless, potty training would be done, all the camp sign-ups finished, etc.

I will wind up taking a few days away at some point to work on my big projects (so this is not exactly a woe-is-me post), but a month probably isn’t going to happen.  In the meantime, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about such lofty matters as how to prove a child understands the quadratic equation so he can take a summer engineering course (harder than you might think when your district doesn’t do a standard algebra 1-geometry-algebra 2 sequence, but combines topics from each in different years). Also, a competition blazer that was dutifully ordered during one week’s Friday Punch List has gone missing. UPS claims it was delivered. The package is no where to be found.

Anyway, there is much to be written about who does what work, and much has been written on this topic. But if you happen to be in a situation where you are carrying a substantial mental load, I think batching the little things is one of the most practical strategies for at least keeping the heavy mental load in check so time is available for longer projects that require focus.

This somewhat radical proposition is that you carve out time for your highest value work, or the work you want to do, and then you force as many of the other things as possible into the remaining chunks that you allot for them. I know this doesn’t work for all professions, or even make sense for some. But if you are in the business of coming up with ideas or analyzing complicated matters, there is no substitute for time and attention. It’s just a matter of what you give your time and attention to.

And so, yesterday, despite the missing competition blazer (re-ordered because we need it) and the camp issue (I gave up and my kid chose a different class with no algebra 1 pre-req), I carved out time to write a new short chapter and revise a different one. I’ll do more today and Thursday as well.

I guess I could end the blog post there, but there’s a second and related point about deep work and mental load, which is that if you do want to do creative work, or speculative work, or any sort of focused and intense work, it can be easy to tell yourself a story that you need a month in that cabin to do it. Or even that you need a free day. I had been somewhat telling myself this story as I looked at this week’s schedule. The only really open day is Thursday, so I figured I’d work on the novel then.

In particular I did not think that Tuesday (yesterday) would be a good day for creative work. I was a guest on several podcasts (batching those on the schedule too of course). I love talking about time management and I’m flattered that any host wishes to talk to me about it. I also know that as an introvert, talking to lots of people all day can take a lot out of me.

But I had a two hour break between shows in the middle and I had a revelation (as I might tell someone else…) that you don’t actually need a whole day to make progress. You can do a lot in two hours if you just get started.

And so I did. Perhaps I would produce better work in that cabin. But if the cabin is not happening soon, something is almost always better than nothing.

So batch to reduce the mental load. And then don’t wait for perfect conditions to do the work you want to do. That’s how these things actually fit into life.

In other news: Wondering what this talk of batching is about? This is Rule #8 in Tranquility by Tuesday, my most recent time management book. We’re working through the nine rules over nine weeks here on the blog, and are nearing the end! If you’d like to pick up a copy of Tranquility by Tuesday there are links to retailers here.

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