However…this means I now don’t have a car during the day. I put time on the schedule this weekend for my husband and I to go look at a few models as the plan is for my (2011) car to be the “kid” car.

And…I just couldn’t make myself do it. I have such a block on this. Partly I was just feeling a bit like I’d already asked a lot of myself on Friday with getting an MRI (looking at my lower back). I do not like small enclosed spaces (or medical things in general!) but I counted myself through it. So my supply of willpower was somewhat tapped out.

I guess I’ll figure this out eventually! As I’m thinking about it, this is only an acute issue for the next few weeks as my son won’t need a car daily over the summer that I am aware of — he’ll be away at an academic program for several weeks, and he’s volunteering at a program where my little kids will be too, so presumably someone would already be driving them. Hmm…

In the meantime, the weekend went pretty well. Post MRI I went to an all-district middle school jazz band competition where my middle two kids were performing. Their band sounded really good. Like not just hey, my kids are playing, but like legitimately enjoyable jazz music. I know the ensemble has been working really hard so it is cool to see this come together.

On Saturday morning I took my eldest to go take the SAT. He had taken it in March but thought he could do better so he registered for the May date as well. I have my fingers crossed that he will be happy with his score.

Despite the Saturday weather being only about 65 degrees and rainy, my husband took the three younger kids in our pool, which is newly opened for the season. I personally will be waiting for a day that is 80 degrees and sunny to experience this, but hey. My husband also ran the Broad Street 10-miler in 50 degree weather with a bit of a drizzle. I did not run due to my back issues but I was not that sad about not running in the cold rain…

On Sunday I spent an hour working in Starbucks while my 9-year-old was at a birthday party. I got a lot done! Then my husband and I went out for dinner at a local restaurant we had driven past a hundred times but I’d never been to. It was fine, but it was also good to chat through some upcoming family logistics.

Unfortunately, last night was bad again. The 4-year-old got up twice. The second time he had a nightmare — which apparently involved his 9-year-old brother not letting him play in his “castle.” He told me he was so, so sad about this and now couldn’t sleep. Eventually he did but it took a solid 30 minutes…

It’s been fun to see this now toddler-aged book be out in the world. I enjoyed writing it, and I think it has a lot of useful ideas in it. If you read it, I hope you enjoyed it as well!

If you haven’t read TBT (as I call it), would you please pick up a copy? (Scroll down on that page for links to various retailers.) It’s available in ebook and audio form as well if you prefer that. You can also help me out by requesting that your library order a copy (or order more copies if there are multiple holds). Thank you!

In the meantime, if you read the book and adopted any new habits as a result, I’d love to hear about it. And please check out these short videos about several of the Tranquility by Tuesday rules! I loved filming stories about real people’s lives and how these rules can make a difference.

Here’s a video about the benefits of Rule #2: Plan on Fridays.

Here’s a video about a family adopting Rule #6: One big adventure, one little adventure.

Here’s a video about how life changes with Rule #7: Take one night for you.

Here’s a video about the upsides of Rule #9: Effortful before effortless.

Thanks for all your support of me and my books — it really means a lot to me.

I hope you found the challenge useful. I know when I follow the nine rules my life tends to feel better. This past week has been challenging in various ways — logistically in terms of day to day driving and activities and childcare arrangements. And emotionally — a member of my chamber choir passed away rather unexpectedly this week. We found out she’d been hospitalized right before rehearsal last week and then learned last night that she was gone.

(Longtime readers may recall that it was exactly this time of year in 2018 when I lost a fellow choir member from a different choir — you can read that post here.)

Anyway, I know that matters of productivity and time management can seem mundane. Or as I put it in that post from 2018, “We are spinning on an improbable planet in the middle of cold space. A young man with a rich and enthusiastic voice gets on a helicopter and a few hours later is being cut out of his harness. And here I am talking about turning a 30-minute meeting into a 20-minute one.”

But ultimately being satisfied with how we spend our hours leads to being satisfied with how we spend our lives — however long those lives may wind up being.

I don’t know how many days I have, but in general I have more energy on those days when I go to bed at a reasonable time and move my body if at all possible. I don’t know how many weeks I have (4000, maybe?), but in general those weeks feel less chaotic when I plan on Fridays and think through my priorities. My big adventure this week was traveling to DC to see the cherry blossoms at near-peak bloom — an experience that always reminds me of the wonder of this planet (with the fleeting blooms themselves being something of a metaphor). And life feels more joyous when I take one night each week to sing in my various choirs — making beautiful music with fellow singers who are all transiently here together.

I hope the Tranquility by Tuesday rules have been helpful for you as well. I’ve had a few folks ask about running an additional cohort for the challenge, and since the emails are automated I’m sure I can work something out that people can start at various points. So stay tuned on that.

In other news: Speaking of books…Gretchen Rubin’s new book, Life in Five Senses, will be out next month. I got to read an advance copy and enjoyed it! It is vintage Gretchen, and very much like the Happiness Project in style. She has a quiz to help you figure out your “neglected sense” here. Mine turns out to be “touch.” A good reason to turn on the seat warmer in the car during these last cold winter days…

Photo: Cherry blossoms — always fleeting — blooming around the Tidal Basin this week

If you’ve been working on doing effortful fun before effortless fun this week, here are a few questions to help you reflect on the experience.

• Think back over the past week. What sorts of “effortful” fun did you do?
• When did you choose to make time for this effortful fun?
• What effects did you see in your life from making time for effortful fun?
• What challenges did you face while trying to do effortful fun before effortless fun? How did you address these challenges?
• If you modified this rule, how did you do so?
• How likely are you to continue to do effortful fun before effortless fun?

Since we’re wrapping up the challenge this week, it’s a good time to reflect on all the other rules too!

• 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 into your life generally?
• Did you have one big adventure and one little adventure this past week?
• Did you take one night (or a few hours) for your interests this week?
• Did you batch the little things?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this challenge. I’ll post a little more about it tomorrow but…it’s been nine weeks! Thanks for reading along. If you enjoyed the challenge, you’d probably enjoy the Tranquility by Tuesday book as well, so please check it out! You can request that your library order a copy — or order an ebook copy! — and then you can check it out and use that as your effortful fun over the next week or so.

In other news: Check out this Tranquility by Tuesday In Real Life video I made about how one busy woman embraced the idea of effortful fun.

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

I have always liked puzzles. But about two years ago, I decided to adopt jigsaw puzzles as my “effortful” fun of choice. I aim to generally have a puzzle going — usually a 1000-piece one though I have done some 500- and 750-piece ones to shake things up.

In these years of doing dozens of puzzles, I have had a few revelations. First, puzzles are a really good form of non-screen fun. Unlike a lot of board games, you can do them alone or with another person. If you’ve got a group together (say, family visiting; renting a beach house with two other families), they’re good evening entertainment because people can come and go, so if someone has to go put a kid to bed, they don’t wind up being unable to participate.

(Another revelation, which as I think about it makes sense mathematically: 500 piece puzzles don’t take half as long as 1000-piece puzzles; it’s probably 25 percent or less of the time. There are just a lot fewer places for pieces to go!)

Puzzles don’t require a ton of energy. You just sit there while you’re doing them! Figuring out where pieces go requires some mental energy but it is a vastly different form of mental energy than those of us in information-oriented jobs tend to use. It is quite possible to get into a flow as you’re pulling together a section and a lot of the pieces start to fit. Very satisfying!

As with anything one spends a lot of time doing, I have developed some preferences. And perhaps some snobbery. First, I like bigger puzzle pieces. I also don’t like ones that are flimsy (the established big name companies in the puzzle world such as White Mountain and Buffalo Games tend to be better about this). I like glossy rather than matte finishes. And, a key thing for me, the puzzle needs to feel fairly doable. Think relaxing, not frustrating. Giant patches of blue sky make finishing a puzzle tedious. It’s helpful to be able to look at a piece and know roughly where it goes. Not exactly where it goes — I did a puzzle of Jane Austen book covers recently that felt a bit like cheating since it was immediately obvious where every piece went — but roughly.

Sometimes images that are beautiful on their own do not make for good puzzles. My husband, who knows I like puzzles, but doesn’t really do puzzles himself, gave me a puzzle version of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” for Christmas. I started it, but gave it a DNF about 20 percent of the way in. There was just too much of the same blue and swirl pattern. I switched to a kitschy ski village scene. Way worse art, but a much better puzzle.

Mostly because I can get into the flow and lose track of time, I tend to not do puzzles during what I consider my work hours; twenty years into self-employment I have some pretty ingrained work rules for myself.* Instead, I tend to do them while the 3-year-old is watching a show, or after the kids have gone to bed, or if I have weekend downtime. In other words, I choose times when I would find it more challenging to work, or when I would prefer not to work. It really is a screen time substitute. And given that I spent 5 hours doing my puzzle during a busy week last week I’m glad it is a screen time substitute! I don’t think scrolling around online for those 5 hours would have been a better use of my time.

What’s your effortful fun of choice? Reading is no doubt my largest category by total hours, but puzzles might be in second place.

In other news: Looking for a book to read during your effortful fun time? Check out Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters — that is the book that contains all these rules we’ve been discussing over the last 9 weeks in the challenge.

*curiously, I will allow myself to play the piano during short work breaks. While I love playing the piano I tend not to be able to play for an hour without noticing that the time has passed!

Photo: Example of a good puzzle, in my opinion — colorful, no vast spaces of the same color, but some ambiguity in where a piece might go. 

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.

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!

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.

During the week, I keep a “Friday Punch List” where I write down all my non-urgent tasks. I then get to all of them in one fell swoop on Fridays. It’s kind of fun to do 20 little things in a row. I feel like a machine as I cross them off! If things can’t wait until Friday, I’ll aim to do a (very) small window in the afternoon on another day (as mornings tend to be my most productive time).

When I’ve explained this rule to people, a few have brought up the “2-minute rule.” The particular version of this rule they’re often referring to is that if a task will take less than 2 minutes, you should just do it when you see it. In other words, the complete opposite of batching the little things.

And on some level this makes sense. If it occurs to me to ask someone about test taking skills programs in my area, it would be reasonably quick to just do it when I think about it. It might take me the bulk of 2 minutes to get in the mindset of sending a text on that topic if I push the task forward and do it later. Well, perhaps not me since I tend to make quick transitions (the subject of an upcoming BOBW podcast, incidentally…), but many people.

However…there are problems with this 2-minute rule. First, am I sure this is a 2-minute task? Texting someone about the test skills program might lead to a conversation about something else. I might also see another text I haven’t responded to yet and feel like I should answer that. Or I might note that there is now a higher number on my email icon on my phone and so I should check those messages. And distractions aren’t the only problem; sometimes the tasks themselves turn out to be bigger than expected, and humans in general are terrible at time estimation. Even me! Getting an address changed for something the other day turned out not to be a simple online matter, but involved calling the customer service line and getting a form filed. Not 2 minutes!

And second…how shall I put this…I think that perhaps some folks advocating the 2-minute rule have fewer personal small tasks on their plates than many people reading this blog. If someone else in your life is filling out all permission slips/yearbook order forms/cast party food contributions forms, and being the recipient of the texts about changing times for kids’ tutoring/therapies/private lessons, and doing camp sign-ups (with the associated medical/contact/etc. forms…), or none of those things are germane to your situation, then one might be more free with the limited number of tasks that need to be done. Those of us who do have a lot of small things on our plate have to be careful or they will literally consume our entire lives.

(And I say this as someone who has outsourced A LOT, professionally and personally.)

There is one useful aspect of the 2-minute rule, which is the truth that if you don’t do the task immediately, it might keep weighing on you. You want to write the Great American Novel but you need to buy cat food, and so you keep thinking “cat food! cat food! cat food!” Or you forget about the cat food and then remember it at 3 a.m.

But! Here is another truth. You will not be perpetually bothered by your lack of cat food if you write “order cat food” on a list that you know you will look at, and that you know you have a set time for completing.* If you schedule a dentist appointment for 8:30 a.m. next Thursday, you probably wouldn’t sit there obsessing about it as an “undone” task (even though the appointment hasn’t happened yet). It is a defined task, assigned to a set time, and so you’re good.

Done well, a Friday Punch List (or an any day Punch List!) can serve the same purpose. Whereas going off to do 2-minute tasks whenever you think of them is a recipe for getting very little of substance done.

*Actually this is a bad example as stuff like maintaining the cat food inventory should be automated.

In other news: Add this to this week’s task list! My Best of Both Worlds podcast co-host Sarah is hosting the first ever Best Laid Plans LIVE session in Ft. Lauderdale this fall. It will be November 2-4, and she’s going to be guiding us through planning 2024 to make it the best year yet! I am signed up and looking forward to it — and looking forward to meeting other BLP listeners/TheSHUBox readers in person. Hope to see you there!