Archive | April 2019

Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman~10: My time journal

As promised, here is my time journal for 3/25-3/31:

  • sleep: 49 hours
  • work: 46 hours
  • exercise: 3 hours
  • family time: 7 hours
  • writing/writing-related activity: 5 hours
  • laundry: 2 hours
  • housework and ‘kid’ work: 5
  • menu planning/cooking: 8 hours
  • meals: 12 hours
  • Social Media/internet ‘putter’: 13 hours
  • vacation planning: 2 hours
  • reading book for book review: 2.5 hours
  • showering/dressing/grooming: 3.5 hours
  • planning garden: 2 hours
  • planning 7 year old’s birthday celebrations (yes, that’s plural): 2 hours
  • reading: 3 hours
  • general planning/bullet journaling: 3 hours
  • total: 168 hours

I have some thoughts and observations. I work almost as much as I sleep, and for 4/1-4/7, I worked more than I slept by at least 10 hours. This does not seem like a healthy balance. I spent more than half a day on Social Media and puttering online. OMG. Gentle reader, I am as shocked and appalled as you are.

Almost an entire day is devoted to food preparation. I do enjoy cooking, and I try to prep ahead–which doesn’t always work due to poor planning.

I spent a lot of time planning–at least 10 hours. I do love to plan; however, almost all of the planning is for specific events. I spent almost as much time researching ‘space cake’ as I did planning my day and my week. Ortlund would probably tell me I need to re-examine this. I don’t spend much time on my appearance, which I knew, but it’s funny to me that I spent more time planning my vacation and my garden than I did on my appearance. Now, if we count exercise, then I spent 7.5 hours–funnily enough, that’s very similar to Ortlund’s just over an hour per day on her appearance.

If we add laundry, housework, and food prep, I spent 15 hours on that. My husband helps a lot–he does all the dishes and bathrooms (bless him).

There are things I think I did well. I got in the recommended 30 minutes of physical activity 6/7 days. I planned ahead, although not as much as I probably should have. I devoted an hour every day to family time and an hour daily to writing.

There are clear areas for improvement. First and foremost, I was unaware of just how much time I was losing to Twitter and Googling items. (Do we count OED and Etymology online as putter or research?) I only read for 3 hours; that’s not even 30 minutes a day. I can do better than that. I didn’t play the piano once. But hey, now I know where to find the time…

We’ll pick up again with the next chapter of Ortlund’s book in the next post.