timemanagement

Can you meet me halfway?

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If your workweek starts on a Monday at 5 am, can you guess the mid-week point? 

According to Laura Vanderkam, or with a bit of calculation, your mid-week point is Thursday 5 pm. Were you right?

If your workweek starts on a Sunday at 5 am like me, then Wednesday, which happens to be the day I am writing this post, is the middle of the week.  

Many of us get it wrong because we think the week is over when the workweek ends and the weekend starts. 

Why am I telling you this? 

Because it is such a relief!

We can’t get everything we care about done in 24 hours. We roughly spend 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working, 1 hour eating, 2 hours driving, 1-2 hours on screens, and 2 hours taking care of home and family. So, that leaves only 1 hour to read, journal, connect with loved ones and work on a meaningful personal project. 

But, when you remember you still have half of the week ahead of you, you feel hopeful that you can create more time for these activities if you plan with a weekly perspective of 168 hours instead of the limited 24 hours. For example, you can exercise, read or visit your parents on weekends instead of feeling guilty you have not done any of these things during the workweek. 

Does not this give you a sense of renewed determination? 

I believe that creating weekly and even monthly plans is an act of genuine self-care, and I encourage you to try it.

You got this!

P.S. Laura is releasing a new book in October, and I am sure I will love it as much as I loved her previous ones.  

Can you meet me halfway?

Is it the right time?

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Years ago, I used to buy courses to do in summer and then feel bad about not finishing them. I thought that I was the kind of person who did not finish what she had started.

As I became more reflective and also self-forgiving, I knew better. I realized that, in most cases, it was all about timing. 

Choosing the right time to do courses matters a lot. Choosing the right time to start habits matters a lot. Choosing the right time to work on your goals matters a lot.

Continue reading “Is it the right time?” →
Is it the right time?

Tips to Make the Most of Your Weekends

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A rejuvenating weekend is key to a productive work/school week ahead.

Here are some tips to prepare for your weekends.

  1. Check the weather; sunny weekends call for different plans than rainy ones. 
  2. Keep your partner or family members updated on your upcoming weekend plans at least two days ahead of the weekend and check in on their plans. I talk with my husband about the weekend on Wednesdays and let him know what I have in mind or already planned. If I have a morning of appointments or a night out with girlfriends planned out, he will make plans too. The same goes the other way around. 
  3. If you’re in the mood to go out somewhere nice as a couple, explicitly ask your partner and not leave it to chance. 
  4. Check IMDb ratings before watching a movie to have a pleasant movie night experience. 
  5. Check the expected homework load for the kids, which could impact family outings. In our household, we try to do most of the homework on weekends to have more leisurely evenings on school nights.
  6. As much as possible, run your errands and appointments and shop for groceries on weekends, preferably in the morning. This way, you’ll get done faster and relieve yourself from wasting precious evenings during the workweek. 
  7. Make sure visiting your parents, if geographically possible, is accounted for in your weekend plans. 

Weekends constitute 29% of your week. A well-spent weekend can renew your family bonds and help you make significant progress in your personal or home projects. 

Plan wisely.

Tips to Make the Most of Your Weekends

What a pastor said about time management

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I was mesmerized by this sentence that a Lutheran pastor named Amy shared with Cal Newport, “Time management is a core spiritual practice.” It deeply resonated with me and my increasing interest in time management.

Planning our days helps us appreciate how finite time is. Practicing digital minimalism helps use our time and attention better. When we plan our day we can be present with whatever task we have; it’s the task we planned to do and this is the time allocated for it and that’s how our monkey brain can quiet down.

Then, we can experience the dimension of presence and flow in our work.

It also reminded me of what Nir Eyal said, “Time management is pain management”. Can you stay with your uncomfortable feelings long enough without initiating distraction?

What a pastor said about time management

Best Gift

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Finally, I got to feel that summer break has officially started as we enjoyed the first full weekend without any due homework or assessments to prepare for. I feel like the Universe created new hours, wrapped them up, and offered them in a shiny box for me. I am grateful for the gift of time.

I slept more, played with my kids more, and happily got overdue chores done. Please note the word “happily”.

Maybe not all summer weekends will feel as blissful. I am just taking the time, here is that word again, to honor the freedom to create our own schedules for the coming weeks.

Let’s make the best of this gift.

Best Gift

The very special post

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I wanted to write this post 2 hours ago, so I started a 30-minute session of focused music on Brain Fm as usual. Few minutes later I paused the music to receive a 15-min call from my friend. Afterwards, as I opened the word document I use to draft my daily posts in, I remembered that a few weeks ago, before my 30-day free trial ended, I used to write on Scrivener software and that they were about to release a brand-new version for windows, the first major update in years, so I went to their website to find that lo and behold it was indeed released, so I paid for the license, downloaded the new shiny software that will absolutely help me write better and fired it up. The software was beautiful.

As I normally did, I hit F11 to use the full screen mode for writing. Unfortunately, the background was dark now and I didn’t’ like it or that I couldn’t change it in options. Therefore, I spent some time looking up the manual to change the background of the composition screen to white, with no success. I had to DuckDuckGo it to find I had to have a JPG image of white to use as my wanted backdrop, so that’s what I did.

Now, I was so ready to write my post.

However, I decided to clean my keyboard first, because I forgot to tell you I spilled some coffee on it yesterday and, although I cleaned it well, the letters D and Z were still sticky.

So here you are, one clean keyboard later, reading how this brilliant post got safely to your browser. It was a long journey of excuses on the way, but I think my writing got better, don’t you think? 🙂

The very special post

Power Hour for Nagging Tasks

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When I read Better than Before book by Gretchen Rubin, I learned so many helpful tips and tricks, one of them is Power Hour for nagging tasks and this is how she defines them:

With this hour, I’d tackle only tasks where I had no deadline, no accountability, no pressure—because these were the tasks that weren’t getting addressed. That’s another Secret of Adulthood: Something that can be done at any time is often done at no time.
-Gretchen Rubin

According to Getting Things Done book, if a task takes less than 2 minutes do it now. If it takes more, write it down to free up mental space and have the list accessible to you to use whenever you have some time free time or for your weekly power hour. Gretchen downsized this rule in her one-minute rule in her book The Happiness Project.

Sometimes I have no idea how long a nagging task would take, so I use a stopwatch to time it and find out and most probably laugh at myself afterwards for all the times I felt burdened by it.

A recent example is when I wanted to add a subscription option to my blog but didn’t know how, so I set the stopwatch. It only took me 10 minutes to make it happen and I felt lighter after.

Another tip is that you can set a timer and decide beforehand that if the time is up and the task is not complete yet it is perfectly ok to stop the task too, or, if you get some momentum going, keep at it until it is complete.

Celebrate the progress either way.

Power Hour for Nagging Tasks

The 10-Minute Rule

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Still reflecting about the podcast episode I wrote about yesterday where the author Nir Eyal shared the 10-minute rule as a way to reduce distraction.

He said that as human beings we fear abstinence. Announcing “I will never do that thing again” might trigger the rebellious side we have and make it difficult to break our negative patterns.

What should we do instead?

Continue reading “The 10-Minute Rule” →
The 10-Minute Rule