As a mom, wife, family CFO, small-time freelance writer, aspiring yoga teacher, I often struggle to find the right balance on how to utilize my 24 hours a day.
These days, besides watching the stock market a lot more closely (for obvious reasons!), I have also been feeling the urge to grow my writing business and teach more yoga lessons. I love these three aspects of my life a lot and know I couldn't live without them. But I only have so many hours to devote, and each does require a certain amount of discipline to delve deep into the craft. So, very often, I do one a lot more, at the expense of the other or worse, procrastinate and ignore the important stuff. Finally, I find myself feeling guilty. I always gave the excuse that there was so much housework to do, so many errands to run, since I am also the chief Maid in the house.
"168 Hours" author Laura Vanderkam had it figured out by asking readers to think of our disposable hours not as daily chunks of 24 hours but more as weekly portions of 168 hours. It's a very simple but powerful concept. After all, our Mondays should be very different from our Saturdays and for that matter, Fridays too! So, why are we so bogged down to looking at our tasks on a day-to-day basis. Also, she forces one to take a close look at what truly makes us feel alive and make sure that we devote a specified number of hours on those areas on a weekly basis. Certainly, cleaning house everyday does not fall into that category for me.
I know this book works for me because even before I have finished half of it, I have started to carry out some of the tasks she asked us to do. I have started a time log (in half hour chunks) noting down what I do. It seems so much like me noting down my daily expenses when I first started on my path to attain financial freedom. Just that this time, it's the limited resource of "time" that I am very careful about.
That very act alone had me subconsciously working my way into serious work. Because I know I can only do X solid hours each on these three areas of my life "personal finances", "writing" and "yoga" daily, I became extremely wary of distractions like checking FB, Whatsapp etc, which by-the-way do not count as work although many of us are guilty of doing it during "work time". And productivity has really improved! Things that I thought I would take at least 2 days took less than that. I also didn't "plan ahead" as much as I used to, believing that the internal system would weigh the important versus the not-so-important tasks.
I particularly like the fact that I became a lot less frazzled when the house is a tad messier than normal. In the past, I used to get carried away with cleaning small areas of the house and lost track of time. Now, I have decided to just chunk it on a particular afternoon! I also got my two boys to help out more - delegation or outsourcing at work!
Her chapter on "Don't Do Your Own Laundry" speaks to me loud and clear. She debunked the widely-held belief that "cooking, scrubbing, vacuuming, lunch packing, and laundry" are mandatory tasks under the "caring for the family" core parental competency. Instead, she insisted, time spent conversing, doing things with the family should be where we need to spend more of our time on! I didn't think of it this way before. I often felt guilty not being the "good mom" who keeps the house spick and span. Now, I realize, I was often naggy to my family whenever housework was involved, clean forgetting that why I kept house was really for my family in the first place!
Small things add up. And I hope the changes I make today will really add real joy and fulfillment to my many future 168 hours!
I particularly like the fact that I became a lot less frazzled when the house is a tad messier than normal. In the past, I used to get carried away with cleaning small areas of the house and lost track of time. Now, I have decided to just chunk it on a particular afternoon! I also got my two boys to help out more - delegation or outsourcing at work!
Her chapter on "Don't Do Your Own Laundry" speaks to me loud and clear. She debunked the widely-held belief that "cooking, scrubbing, vacuuming, lunch packing, and laundry" are mandatory tasks under the "caring for the family" core parental competency. Instead, she insisted, time spent conversing, doing things with the family should be where we need to spend more of our time on! I didn't think of it this way before. I often felt guilty not being the "good mom" who keeps the house spick and span. Now, I realize, I was often naggy to my family whenever housework was involved, clean forgetting that why I kept house was really for my family in the first place!
Small things add up. And I hope the changes I make today will really add real joy and fulfillment to my many future 168 hours!