On some level, getting to shows in Madison Square Garden is quite easy. The arena is right above Penn Station/Moynihan Train Hall. I now know that we can be off a train and up by our seats in approximately 12 minutes, and that’s going through security and the ticket scanning! So probably I should consider more such shows in the future. We drove into Philly to get the train, but the Keystone train stops at Ardmore on the way to NYC, and Ardmore is 5 minutes from my house.

Of course, the problem is getting home. It was hanging over my head for most of the concert that we really needed to be on the 10:05 regional back to Philly, as the next train doesn’t go until close to 11:30. The 10:05 is bad enough, getting back to PHL at around 11:45, and then it’s a 20-minute drive home (no traffic). There’s no train back to Ardmore, so if we left our car there we’d have to Uber there to get it. We wound up leaving the show about 3 songs early due to my paranoia. We walked in the door at 12:10 a.m.

But! It was a good show. I enjoyed seeing what sounds the human voice can make and they sang their well-known pieces (Mary Did You Know? and Hallelujah, for instance). I am now feeling quite in the Christmas spirit, if tired after getting up to get kids out the door this morning. I am also realizing that I need to figure out my playbook for tomorrow, what ingredients we still need and what needs to go into the oven when. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

I guess it is officially fall now, so those might be among the last pool trips. September can sometimes be a bonus summer month, with very pleasant days, albeit cooler mornings and nights. I’ve been trying to seize these lingering days.

It was a physically active weekend for me. On Saturday morning I went and ran loops at a local nature trail. I did three loops, which came out to 8.3 (maybe 8.4) miles. I did this in 88 minutes, so that is roughly a 10:40 pace or so, which is close to what I’m hoping to do in my upcoming race. Originally I planned to do 10-plus miles, but then I found out a local trail association was doing a guided hike on Saturday that I wanted to do with them. So, after running the 8.3 miles I quick went home, got a little more coffee and food, then met the group and hiked about 4 miles on some fairly substantial hills.

It all felt pretty decent — this, my 12-plus mile morning — which is…welcome. I’m sending a reassuring message back to January Laura (who couldn’t walk) that this would be possible in September. Here’s hoping this trajectory continues. There’s also just the reality of training for a long race that as you run progressively longer long runs, the earlier long runs don’t feel quite so long. Having run 10.7 miles the previous weekend, 8.3 felt short!

On Sunday evening I went to a performance of Bach’s Musical Offering (BWV 1079) by Filament, an early music group. I enjoyed this, as I also enjoyed listening to several violin pieces as part of my daily Bach listening. As I near the end of that project, I’m pondering what my 2025 year-long project will be. We shall see.

In the meantime, here’s a sonnet called Monday Night:

The asters by the porch have bloomed, a leaf
or two falls in the blue, confetti, gold.
The dusk descends, and with it, disbelief
that summer ends. The smaller boys behold

the driveway, fading, almost hard to see.
Two little bikes go hurtling, racing time
they’ve got a favorite gnarled cherry tree
and so the older one begins to climb.

I help the younger up — their branches part,
and there, in the September sky, the moon
is full, is orange, the evening clouds just start
to tiptoe in, to genuflect, and soon

we all are silent, spellbound by the sheen
and that, what could be hidden, we have seen.

We got back from the beach Saturday afternoon. I decided to record five Before Breakfast podcast episodes that night. On Sunday I sent them in, got my various newsletters squared away, and did podcast prep for a massive recording session on Tuesday. That gave me space on Monday to work through the results from my recent Evening Hours Challenge, and to approve the various surveys that will be part of my upcoming Better Workday Challenge (a 3-week project where people test out three strategies designed to make any workweek better. You can sign up here if you’d like! The results will be used anonymously in my next book. You can still sign up if you did the Evening Hours Challenge too. As usual, my sign-ups tend to skew more female, so male readers are particularly encouraged to sign up – thank you!).

On Tuesday, Sarah and I recorded an episode of BOBW, two intro + Q&As for upcoming interview episodes, plus I interviewed Sarah for Before Breakfast. Yep, Before Breakfast will be launching a weekly longer show in mid-September — I’ll explain the reasoning in this weekend’s Week’s Worth newsletter, but suffice to say it’s a new project.

At noon we did the BOBW Patreon community’s monthly meet-up. Then I finished packing, dropped my 14-year-old off at the high school to take the bus to a cross-country meet and I drove to Newark Airport. I was flying to Austin, TX to give a speech, and American Airlines does very few flights there (they are always at bad times out of PHL, or else require a connection) so I tend to drive to Newark so I can fly direct. I practiced my speech in the car! Then I parked in the garage for Terminal C (an important point for later – the Newark flights flew out of C).

The upside of it being an afternoon event in Austin on Wednesday is that after having a long lovely night of sleep (10:30 CT-7:30 CT) I could work in my hotel room all morning. Even if the morning did not start that early! I had avocado toast for breakfast, worked until 11:30, went to the green room, met everyone and worked there and then gave my talk to the group in early afternoon. It was an all-women (well, 90%) audience as it was a women’s conference, which is always fun. I feel like my material is useful for all people but it tends to land best with people like me, which is probably true for humanity in general.

I was back at the Austin airport that afternoon, and on a 6:26 p.m. flight back to Newark. We landed early, but unfortunately, we landed in Terminal A. I have no idea why United and Newark do this. Flights to/from various destinations alternate between terminal A and C and they are no where close together. So I had to go wait for a shuttle bus to Terminal C. Given that it was 11 p.m., there was a certain amount of gallows humor among the folks waiting for this bus, though I got to talking with one of the Newark airport employees who was herding us around and she mentioned that she never wanted to fly because people were so grumpy when she was dealing with us at the airport, which I thought was kind of sad. Anyway, I made it to my car at something like 11:20, and onto the highway around 11:30, which put me home at 12:55 a.m.

I was in bed around 1:15 a.m. but my goal of sleeping in this morning was somewhat thwarted by the sheer volume of activity around this house. I made it to about 8:15 a.m. with a lot of in and out. Oh well — there’s more running around later today but for now I’m having my coffee and getting a bit less discombobulated…

Photo: Books available for conference attendees. 

For many people this process is revelatory. Giant blocks of time pass mindlessly (real quote: “Was I abducted?”)

But there are some folks whose lives are already meticulously planned. Almost every hour is going to something they need or want to do: advancing in a full-time job, spending time with a young family, getting enough sleep, exercising, reading, often being involved in some community or faith-based activities. There’s no magical pot of hours to be redistributed from low-value activities to high-value activities. Pretty much everything is a high-value activity, and so everything has a high opportunity cost.

This can be frustrating. When women lament this situation, they are often told that “no one can have it all!” But it’s not just a female concern. I received a note this week from a male reader in the same bind: growing business, multiple little kids, community involvement, and a general desire to read more books, exercise, and try other hobbies. He wasn’t watching TV. He wasn’t on social media. His time logs proved that.

If any of this sounds like your life, there are a few things to think about for finding time when there is no time. One is to make sure to look at time over the whole of the week. Yes, evenings are for family, but nothing has to happen every single night. Instead of thinking “I can either read to my kids or read for myself” maybe try reading to the kids five nights a week and taking the other two nights as an opportunity to add a few more minutes to your own weekly tallies. As for community involvement and friends, if you are co-parenting with someone, you could trade off, so each of you gets one night “off.” The kids are still with a parent at night, but each grown-up has a few extra hours to pursue their own interests.

I’d also aim small when trying to add things into a very busy life. I maintain that anything that happens three times a week is a habit. Highly productive people often assume that they need to make something a daily habit, which is just not going to happen in a life where every minute is spoken for. But if you want to practice the piano, maybe you could find 3 20-minute slots during the week when that might be an option. That’s only an hour, total. Maybe one of the bigger pots of hours can yield just a little more space. If you’re working 44.8 hours per week you try working 43.8 hours per week and find the time there. Or (gasp!) it can come from those sometimes low-value weekend family hours. Trade off with your partner, practice the piano 20 minutes on Saturday and Sunday and then just do one weekday, maybe when you decided you didn’t need to do that last conference call. These things don’t have to be either/or.

The good news is that life might open up at some point. It won’t be less busy next week or maybe even next year, but businesses often do become more self-sustaining. Kids do become more independent (even if they need to be driven everywhere under the sun.…) And then you’ll be able to exercise for longer, say on Saturday mornings while your pre-teen and teenage kids are all asleep until 10 a.m…

In other news: Just a brief (sort of) TBT scorecard for the past week… I was mostly in bed by 11 p.m., though the toddler’s wake-ups meant that often wasn’t enough. A few nights I wound up spending some hours on the twin bed in his room that will eventually be his.

I planned on Friday…actually on Thursday because I was feeling anxious about getting everything done before vacation.

I got some exercise by 3 p.m. 5 out of 7 days. I did not on Tuesday because I elected to nap after the toddler was up from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. and then again in the morning around 5:30… I did not on Wednesday because I was driving to an event and didn’t manage to do anything before getting in the car (though I did walk around the town between parking and going to my event, so now that I think about it that might count).

I have been focusing on a few activities to do three times a week. I ran four times, so I cleared that bar. I played the piano three times. Family dinner, on the other hand, happened zero times, if you mean all of us being there. It was that kind of week, but it’s not like I tried and failed, it’s more that we had so much evening stuff.

I try to leave Fridays open, which was wise this week as a kid wound up home sick, and then I was able to get a camp form filled out by the pediatrician in one day since I had the space to drive there twice.

As for adventures, I guess my big one was driving to my speech in upstate NY…or maybe the Friday event at my husband’s office where we did wine pairings with various small plates? As a little adventure….I watched the livestream instead of going into NYC for the concert on Saturday night, but listening to seven premieres is still exciting and out-of-the-ordinary. Or going to a farmer’s market on Saturday! My daughter and I went and had fun — we will likely do this more often since it’s close. (Plus that crosses something off the summer fun list!)

Now that choir practice is done the “one night for me” is more nebulous, though watching the livestream could be that – I took my dinner on Saturday into my office and no one disturbed me.

I batched the little things on Friday as always and did reasonably with “effortful before effortless.” I’m reading Under the Whispering Door, and am about three-quarters of the way through. That was mostly because of reading in little chunks of time. I don’t always open the Kindle app before the Instagram app, but when I do, I make progress…

Photo: Watching the livestream….plus surf & turf dinner from the grill!

But there are little bright spots as usual, and a moment on Friday that made me grateful. I will admit that I was nervous about the 6-year-old’s parent-teacher conference. I don’t want to write too much about specifics as my kids get older but longtime readers know that he is…spirited. This plays out in various predictable ways. There had been a disciplinary incident on Thursday night at one of his activities that had me quite upset.

Anyway…his first grade teacher, bless her, is a wonderful person who has her methods for dealing with 6-year-olds (for instance, she hands out sheets of scented stickers like they’re candy on Halloween). She told us that he was a joy to have in class, and such a sweet boy, and that he had told her he was nervous about the conference (!) but she said he shouldn’t be because he was doing a good job.

Cue me finally exhaling. I then remembered that he had told me he had put something for me in his desk.

So we all went to look and this little sticky note is what I found. He is a sweet little boy. I left him a note too!

It seems harmless enough — a way to let the world know how incredible the demand for our time is — but there are some real downsides to buying into the myth of the time crunch. First, of course, is that we absolve ourselves of the burden of choice. The reality is that much busyness is self-inflicted. We control what we do with our time. But claiming to be busy, busy, busy and having no time lets us absolve ourselves of this responsibility. We outsource control of our own lives. Better to realize that “I don’t have time” really means “It’s not a priority.”

But on an even more practical level, the myth of the time crunch makes people feel so busy that we have to rush. I have written elsewhere of people turning left out of Sam’s school parking lot despite the no-left-turn sign, apparently believing this sign applies to other people who don’t have places to go and can afford the extra 2 minutes it takes to turn around at the next street. Backing up the carpool line for everyone else while you turn left is just collateral damage. Today I saw an even more egregious example. The little boy getting out of the car at the front of the line was crying and so the drop-off was going slowly. The car behind the front car pulled out and around and cut back in front — a sudden move that was quite risky in a parking lot of children, and that shaved a grand total of 1 minute from this person’s drop-off routine. And that no doubt added stress to the parent at the front of the line whose kid was crying. You’re not moving fast enough!

I hate being late as much as anyone. But it is not worth behaving in an anti-social manner to save a minute or two. I think the myth of the time crunch lets people believe, on the margins, that such decisions are okay. Nope. You are not that busy.

by Camille Noe Pagán

I don’t know when, exactly, I started cringing when I heard the word busy (yes, even when it was coming out of my own mouth). Maybe it was when I noticed that when I asked others how they were doing, they inevitably responded “busy” instead of “good.” Maybe it was when I began feeling like “busy” was shorthand for “I’m important/popular/successful.” (I’ve heard this phenomenon referred to as the cult of busyness, which seems about right).

Obviously, there are times when it’s okay—and even necessary—to say you’re busy. But saying it less often gives it a lot more weight when you actually need it. Here’s how I’ve been scaling back on the B word:

1. I say when I’m available instead of when I’m not. I was attempting to make plans with a friend one day, heard myself talking and stopped in my tracks. There I was, laying out all my various travel plans and meetings and deadlines … and I was boring myself, which means my friend was probably seconds from dropping into a coma. I realized that it was more effective and easier on the ears to simply tell her when I was free. I don’t always get it right, but I’m making a concerted effort to do that more often.

2. I stopped using “I’m busy” as an excuse. As Laura points out, “I’m busy” usually means “It isn’t a priority.” When you don’t want to do something, or even can’t do something (say, a PTA fundraiser or a lunch that you know will eat up the rest of your workday), try saying “No thank you,” or “Maybe next time.” When I realized that I didn’t owe anyone an explanation for how I choose to spend my time, I stopped using the B word so often. Interestingly, the guilt factor went way down. In some way, saying “I’m busy” when someone asks you to do something seems sort of like saying “You’re not as important as the other things I’m doing.” A simple “I can’t” or “Not now” seems straight-forward and impersonal (in a good way).

3. I acknowledge that the other person is busy—and leave it at that. It’s too easy to get into a busy pissing match. You mention that you have some commitment keeping you tied up; the other person tells you how they have two commitments that are exhausting them; you feel the need to show them that hey, you’re exhausted, too, because you’re actually doing even one more thing you forgot to mention before; and so on … until the friend or colleague you’re talking to suddenly seems unbelievably annoying (and guess what? She’s thinking the same thing about you!).

When a family member recently listed her insanely crazy schedule to me, I simply said, “Wow, sounds like you have a lot going on.” She looked, well, grateful. It could have been that she just wanted someone to acknowledge that her life is extremely stressful right now. I’m not sure. I just know that it felt good to listen instead of trying to talk.

Camille Noe  Pagán is a journalist (O, Forbes.com, Parade, Glamour), mom to two kids and author of the novel The Art of Forgetting.