How many times have you thought, “I need to do _____” only to “realize” you don’t have enough time. Let’s be honest with ourselves: 9 times out of 10 that is not true in the least. When I first started attacking this idea that I didn’t have enough time, I started timing myself. I would stare at the pile of dishes and think, “I should do this but I’ll be late if I start now.” After I timed it, I realized it was a 3 minute job and I often had 5 to spare. This was such a freeing realization because I sincerely believed both things: that I needed to do the job and that I didn’t have enough time. Soon I realized that this part of my brain was broken and I needed to acknowledge that the thought “it will take too long” should be treated as an unreliable calculation.
I’m not sure how this lie started worming its way into brains everywhere but it really needs to stop. If you think you don’t have time – try anyways and see how far you get. Half done dishes are better than never done. After you time yourself doing several activities that will “take too long” my guess is you’ll notice that they were a 10 minute job, not a 30 minute job your brain exploded the situation into.
Learning to better estimate time to task completion is a skill that needs to be developed by procrastinators who, for whatever reason, seem to fall short of its mastery.
There you have it. Next time you think, “I don’t have time to do that right now” call your own bluff and give it a try!
In the last little bit I’ve been needing a refresher on some of the stuff I’ve previously blogged about on the topic of productivity. These days I’m learning what it means to not procrastinate around the home. My problem at home is that I’m not a cleaner, and I’m rarely tidy for longer than a few days. I just slink back into my old slobbish ways. Growing up my parents called me Messy Jessy for obvious reasons: my room was always total chaos, but it was a chaos I understood. I could always find whatever I was looking for UNTIL I TIDIED.
Now that life with baby has mostly fallen into a recognizable routine it’s time I figured out how to keep this place in order. Thus the return to all the things I’ve learned about decision fatigue and habit development, productivity, and everything else. But before I remembered to pull up those old blog posts, I found myself Googling something like “help! I’m a slob” and found FLYlady.net which is a frightening website but a really good system. As I read through it I could identify elements of keystone habits, combating decision fatigue, and a whole range of other things I’ve blogged about. Basically, I was in heaven. In reading through the website and adopting (and adapting) the plan for myself, I noticed a few mental traps I always fall into when it comes to getting things done.
Over the next few posts I’m going to address each one individually. I’ve talked about some of these in my e-book and definitely in previous blog posts, but never as specifically as this. I hope it will be as helpful to you as the realizations have been for me.
There are two places I get good ideas about my life: Pinterest and my husband. This week my cousin-in-law (is that a thing?) pinned a picture of the chronodex/hyperdex/spiraldex and if you’re looking at these for the first time you’re probably thinking, “How the heck does this work?”
As I started googling it I found out a few things:
It’s time management for visually oriented people.
Chronodex is the original but since then people have adapted it to suit their needs. Now there’s hyperdex, spiraldex etc.
It’s super useful if you want to track how you’re multitasking/layering OR track different schedules
How do you use it?
CHRONODEX
A chronodex version of 2 schedules. It’s less obvious there are 2.
Let’s take a look at the Chronodex first. It’s fashioned after a clock and depending on the version you have it has 12h-24 on it. Basically, you colour in when you’re busy either before your day starts or after to track what you did. I usually did this with my Google Calendar at work. In some ways it’s the same as having a Google Calendar or using multiple calendars on the same view, except that this is for people who like to use paper and probably those who like to make things pretty.
What’s very different from a clock (and from the hyperdex & spiraldex) is the different widths of certain hours. This is how I’mJulie explains it in her review:
Many people wonder why there are 3 different lengths to the time section (short, medium and long). The idea behind it is quite smart: It’s made for all you multi-taskers out there. When you are doing a task that can not be mixed with anything else (like filming a video, creating an outline for your future online course or writing a blog post) you will fill in the time slot to it’s full length (even if the time wedge is shorter, you’re allowed to go outside the lines). If the task was something you can mutli-task (like exporting a video while you make lunch) you will color a part of the height of the wedge with one color and the rest with the other (to represent 2 types of tasks that you did during that piece of time).
In the above picture I was trying to track when Jack eats and sleeps so I can plan what I do during or around those times. The blue is when he naps (though not nearly as long as an hour). But my plan got broken down because I couldn’t quite figure out the chronodex. Do I colour outside the line? Plus, it has aspects of the spiraldex where the hours build on each other like a spiral. For this reason I the hyperdex.
HYPERDEX
The hyperdex was derived from the chronodex by DIYfish. It features the 24h clock which is why I like it. It has 24 slots around and multiple rows which enables better layering/scheduling tracking (in my opinion at least).
Here’s what I threw together in terms of a typical day for Jack and I.I used an image I found on Google images.
His eating schedule is determined by when he wakes up and then follows 2h after, then every 3h, then kind of whenever come the evening (usually 2h-1h). So if we wake up at 7am then it goes 7,9,12,3,5,6 then he’s down for the night. It’s kind of odd maybe but that’s what he seems to like and it works fine for me. We’re still working out regular nap times and the last week he’s only been napping for 30 mins so we’ll work on that.
The smallest circle is Jack’s life, the next one out is me. If I want to build a routine based around morning, evening and his nap times, this works well as a visualization tool for me. I just do that stuff in the fuchsia (it looks more red here) block.
SPIRALDEX
The spiraldex has 24h in it but only one row, so if you want to track layering, then you’re on your own to divide the boxes. The spiral is also smaller than the full 24h circle which may appeal to you for whatever reason. Other than those features it works the same way.
More reading
If you want to know more you can check out these links:
I guess its been a few years (!) now since I first wrote about morning routines. Since then I’ve had varying success and most recently since my son was born, continued varied success.
I’m sure you can relate. If you couldn’t you likely wouldn’t be following this blog.
You have a good routine or daily organization system going and then something happens and it messes it up. You fumble around for a little (or months?) until you remember it doesn’t have to be this way!
And so you reboot your system and try again.
This happens to me all the time and is the reason I tell people not to give up on a system until they’ve failed in this cycle a few times. If it worked for awhile then there’s hope. If it never ever worked then you should probably keep looking.
Routines
Since Jack was born I’ve had a few different routines that have helped me stay sane. For awhile I did at least 2 loads of laundry a day: one in the morning of Jack’s barfy clothes and one in the evening of his cloth diapers. Now I have more clothes and more diapers so I do laundry every other day.
Other mornings I had a routine of waking up, starting coffee, drinking a glass of water, feeding Jack, then shower and get my day in order during his first nap.
Then that got messed up.
So here I am working on a new routine to help me have a decent day despite the unpredictability an infant can bring. There are other routines that I would like to establish so that I don’t have to decide what I want to do or feel like doing. Because I will never feel like cleaning. Ever.
I went back and read those blog posts again and actually found them helpful!
Things that are helpful in a routine
These days I need habits that will help our life work more smoothly. This means that things like laundry, dishes, quiet times and meals get done naturally rather than haphazardly. I think something I need to institute is a consistent wake-up time. I usually wake up when Jack wakes up, which was 6:30 for a long time, then 7:00 for a long time, now it’s 7:30. I think I actually had better days when he was waking up earlier, even though I always needed a nap.
The other thing that has helped me operate well is dealing with clutter quickly, whether it’s unloading the dishwasher right away so it can be loaded as dishes are dirtied, or fold and put away laundry right away. (Sidenote: I have never folded laundry or put it away until Jack was born so let’s just all do a slow clap for me right now because I’m finally a grown up. It only took me becoming a parent).
So we’ll see how this goes! If anyone has any tips on what worked for them (or their mom) please leave me a comment!
Have you ever noticed it’s pretty easy to take a perfectly good thing and turn it into an ugly thing? A bowl of chips can turn into eating the whole bag, a conversation with a friend can turn into gossip, being organized can turn into being obsessive and controlling etc.
I let this happen all the time.
Lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been thinking about this blog and my bucket list and it’s become this ugly thing looming over my head. I think things like:
When will you get it together, Jess, and workout more?
When will you stop stressing over your baby?
If you don’t figure these things out then say goodbye to doing anything with your life.
These are the kind of things that are happening deep in the back of my mind. I try to tell them off:
I will never stop stressing over my kids, it’s what mothers do! (Are you sure it’s all mothers? Can’t you be better than them?)
I don’t need to “do anything with my life”! I still have value even if I don’t “do anything”. (Sure keep telling yourself that. It’s just an excuse for being lazy.)
It’s weird even writing these things out because I know they’re crazy. This blog and these goals were never supposed to turn ugly. They were supposed to add to my life: add challenge, fun, satisfaction, adventure (and bragging rights?). I think it’s that last part that made things go sour. Somewhere I developed a drive to show people I can do these things. When I admit it – like that one ugly response revealed in #2 – I want to be “better” than other people and on some level I think I am. Doing hard things validates this in me.
The last few years I have noticed a frightening trend: I’m not better (surprise, surprise) and I actually give up on hard things pretty easily.
But really, I’m regular. I’m plain-Jane-vanilla-regular and I need to get it through my thick skull that it’s not a bad thing. I’m ordinary and trying to do ridiculous things to try to be different or prove something isn’t going to solve any problems I have but only make more.
So right now I’m going to keep trying to do my little goals:
Be more ok with letting non-relatives watch Jack
Get my hair cut
Go to the dentist
Try to care less what people think about me
Keep going to the gym
And maybe that means I’ll be able to do some of the other bigger things on my list some day. And maybe not. But I refuse to let this stuff define my happiness even if I really really want them. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way we hope or want them to and that’s ok.
Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to chill the frig out.
Here’s what I threw together in terms of a typical day for Jack and I.I used an image I found on Google images.
