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!

A few folks pointed out that this question seems surprisingly similar to a Real Simple article I have talked about for years. Back in 2007 or so, the magazine asked busy readers to write in about what they’d do if they found an extra 15 minutes in their day. My favorite response was from a woman who wrote that 15 minutes of uninterrupted writing time would be a priceless gift. This left me wondering where she found 15 minutes to read Real Simple and write in a letter about this elusive dream.

(Fun fact: This person later picked up a copy of 168 Hours, found reading my joke about her letter a bit jarring, but still reviewed the book nicely!)

The truth is, even the busiest folks have some free time. It might be hard to predict, and sometimes we might need to take an extra logistical step or two to open up possibilities, but the time is most likely there.

However, many of us have a hard time seizing available time for high quality pursuits. The upside of this question — what you would do if an hour opened up on a Tuesday afternoon — is that it nudges people to zero in on exactly what they enjoy doing, and may do some, but feel like they don’t do often enough.

(Well, except for the very honest commenters who noted that they would probably work more or scroll around online!)

So, if you’ve come up with a non-laundry, non-Facebook response to this question, there is a logical next step: Figure out how you can actually take an extra hour for this pursuit!

I’m posting this on a Monday, so tomorrow is Tuesday. Can you plan your afternoon tomorrow to spend an hour doing whatever you chose? What would need to happen for you to make this happen?

Some of us with work flexibility might be able to pull this off without too much trouble, especially if the chosen activity was something like going for a walk, sewing, or reading (or taking a nap!). If the activity involves someone else, that might be more challenging, but if you wanted to call a friend, and you texted her tonight to ask when tomorrow afternoon might work, you might find a mutually agreeable time.

Some people are no doubt booked up solid tomorrow afternoon, or have jobs that don’t allow for moving things around. Some other readers are probably caring for small kids tomorrow afternoon, and so can’t necessarily high-tail it, solo, to the beach. But as you look forward to the next week or so, is there a time you could make this happen? What logistics would you need to work out? If not in the next week, how about the next month?

Hopefully folks will make time soon for whatever they’d do when an hour opened up on Tuesday afternoon. And once you make it happen, that can feel good enough that you become motivated to make it a regular part of your life. And that can feel very good indeed!

TBT Scorecard: As mentioned last week, in advance of Tranquility by Tuesday coming out this fall, I’m grading myself on how I did on the nine TBT rules. I probably won’t post this scorecard every week but it provides a fun rubric for analyzing my time logs.

Last week (April 25-May 1), I was in bed by 11 p.m. six out of the seven nights. On Saturday night I didn’t get into bed until 12:30 a.m. because my high schooler had been traveling to the state Science Olympiad, and his bus got into the high school parking lot at midnight. My husband normally takes on late night teen/pre-teen pick-ups (he keeps later hours than me) but he was running the Broad Street 10-miler on Sunday morning and needed to get up around 6:30 a.m. So I took one for the team there.

I planned on Friday as always. I walked or ran before 3 p.m. every day (mostly walking — I ran on the 2 weekend days, but I’m trying to bump this number up this week as my legs are feeling better). I played the piano three times a week, but sang zero! Choir practice was canceled Thursday and then I didn’t wind up going to church Sunday AM because I had to drive everyone around with my husband gone at Broad Street. Also, I only ran twice. We sort of had two family meals — it was a busy week. If you count meals minus the high schooler (who was gone all Friday and Saturday), then we had more.

(I tend to leave Friday mostly open as my back-up slot and that was true this week too.)

I definitely had one big adventure and one little adventure. Maybe more! On Monday, I took a solo trip to Holland Ridge Farms to pick tulips. It was fun to go with the kids two weeks ago, but we kind of zoomed in and out. Since I had bought a pack of flex tickets, I could go whenever, so I went on my own. I was gone about 3.5 hours. I practiced my speech in the car both ways, so 2 of those hours were, in fact, work time. The tulips were beautiful and it was nice to go when the place wasn’t crowded. Second adventure: I went into NYC on Wednesday-Thursday. I took the train and stayed at a hotel like pre-Covid times! I met a friend for dinner at a French restaurant on Wednesday night and then gave a speech for an event at the Harvard Club in mid-town on Thursday morning. As for little adventures, there were many potential things — a few social get-togethers (we had two different families over to our house this weekend at different times), and my husband and I went to the fundraising gala for the preschool where we will be sending our FIFTH KID next year.

Continuing…I normally consider choir practice to fulfill the “Take one night for you” rule, but since that was canceled, we could count other things, like my dinner in NYC. I ran with a friend on Saturday morning. My husband and I also decided to explicitly divvy up the weekend hours when we were in charge of the 2-year-old, but I mostly used that for work.

I batched the little things on Friday; like planning, my Friday punch list is a habit at this point. As for effortful before effortless…this is still a work in progress. So much scrolling around… In my defense, a lot of my “reading” mental energy was taken up with proofreading the current layout of TBT. Plus finishing Hamlet. I did listen to Appalachian Spring in the car several times instead of random stuff. Maybe I need to go dig a 1000-piece puzzle out of the garage. Or buy a spring one…