Tag Archives: Time

168 Hours, time mosaics and eradicating mom guilt

168 Hours, time mosaics and eradicating mom guilt

One of the ways that I make the most of my gym time is listening to audiobooks. It’s how I was able to hit my reading goal last year, and expands my general “reading”. I wouldn’t sit down to read non-fiction time management books, but they’re pretty cool to listen to while lifting weights or pushing myself on the elliptical. Most recently, I listened to Laura Vanderkam’s I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time and it had some really interesting points that have helped to reframe some aspects of my life.

I like the way she uses different women as her case studies. Each person, each family is unique. While there are some common trends or ways of life that can be found across her sample, it was helpful for her to talk about the differences in careers, in families, in locales and more. After listening to the book, I think I might try to keep my own time log and share the results with you all soon. But for now, here are some of the best parts that I got from this book. Continue Reading

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Saving Time – 5 ways I’ve saved 3.5 hours a week

Saving Time

Last week, I told you how going full-blown freelance has made me see time differently. It’s not just about moaning how busy I am, but about seeing how important it is to value my time, whether it’s focused on work, play, family time or whatever else. It’s also made me realize how important time-saving techniques can be. We can’t get more hours in the day or week, but by saving time, we can get more done and hopefully scrape together some more time as a result.

These are five changes that I’ve made to be more efficient with my time, resulting in an “extra” 3.5 hours a week.  Continue Reading

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Freelance life and the value of time

The Value of TIme

It’s been interesting going full-blown freelance since we moved. I have often written about time – it seems to be a recurring theme on this blog for some reason. I’ve written about being jealous of the time Dean gets, as well as how I need to carve time out of the day for myself. But since I’ve become someone who earns her living by literally charging by the hour, it’s changed my view of the value of time. I don’t just mean in terms of monetary value, but absolute value as well. It’s a good and a bad thing.

The reality is, freelance work by the hour has made me realize just how much value my time, energy and attention is worth.  Continue Reading

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Carving out time

having no time means i'm a headless chicken

I hate when you ask someone how they are and they respond with “busy”. Which is why it grates me that I’ve sorta become one of those people. It’s not on purpose, I swear. I don’t mean it to minimize how busy other people might be, or to somehow glorify the idea that I’m so busy. It’s more an issue of time, and my severe lack of it. Time is such a precious resource, and I’m increasingly aware of how little of it I have each day. Between work, playing taxi service for the husband and kid, and then trying to still get done all the day to day life stuff (dishes, cooking dinner, etc) that needs doing, I feel like I really don’t have any time.

That said, I’ve continued with my daily yoga, going into my third month of it now. I really love the videos from Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and she often talks about how hard it can be to just get on the mat, turn on the video, carving out time for yourself in the day. And yet, once I’m there, I love it, and I relax and focus and remember that I can always pick up my to-do list again when the video is over. So, in that same spirit, I’m trying to carve some time out of my day for something I’ve been struggling to find time for lately – blogging. I really wanted to connect with people more this year – it’s even one of my main goals for the year – but I feel like I’ve been dropping the ball when it came to blogging, so this is me, carving out the time in the day to write some words about what’s been going on, and making a commitment to continue to do so more often. Continue Reading

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Motherhood has made me jealous, of time

jealous of time

Last night, Harley wouldn’t go to sleep. I blame myself – I broke her usual routine. We normally use bath time as a natural sedative. I take her for a bath, read her a book, give her boob and put her to bed, and it works like a charm. But I was an idiot last night. I was playing a fantastic game for review, and I just wanted to keep playing/working. Harley was happily playing on the floor with her toys, so I figured she’d play and tire herself out and still go to bed around her normal time. Well, at 10:30 when I was doing anything and everything to try and calm her down and get her to sleep, I realized I was an idiot. But in that exhausted haze, I experienced another feeling and it wasn’t pretty. I was jealous.

You see, while I was playing my game, I was also watching Harley play in the lounge while my husband chilled in the study, watching videos and playing games. It’s not to say he doesn’t help out – he kept an eye on Harley while I did dishes and started dinner, then swapped with me to finish dinner while I hung out with her. He is always fine to spend time with her so that I can take a shower or pop out to the store. But you see, the default is that I’m in charge of her. The default is that I will watch her while I’m watching TV or playing games or working or whatever else. If I ask him to watch her, he does and he’s great with her… until she crawls into the room I’m in saying “mamamamamamama”. Continue Reading

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