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So I’ve had a few days to reflect on my week of logging my time for the 168 Hours Challenge, and I’ve come to a startling conclusion.

When I don’t log the time, it disappears. For example, I had to get up at the crack of crazy this morning to help get my menfolk off to Cub Scout Day Camp today. They left nearly ninety minutes ago and I’ve done little beyond eat breakfast and drink coffee while reading blogs/emails. While it’s something I enjoy doing and it does need to get done, I also know that if I didn’t need to get up right now to refresh my coffee I’d still be sitting here until the realization hit that I have somewhere to be and hooboy, gonna hafta skip the leg-shaving in the shower again this morning (Hey, I have long legs, takes awhile!).

It comes down to mindfulness and intention. I have too much I want to do with my life to spend it mindlessly too often. Mindless on a Saturday night watching a bad movie or sitting on a cruise ship deck with a frosty drink is one thing; mindless on a random Tuesday morning is something entirely different. I have books that I want to read (my “to read” list is in the hundreds), memories to create and record with children who are growing up much too quickly, hobbies to pursue, writing to throw myself into, new interests to investigate…they all pull on me with equal weight, few get accomplished, none to my high standards. I’m told this is a gifted adult trait. Swell.

So how did my time break down? Well, I was going to break down activities by time, but I’d also like to shave my legs this morning and the clock is ticking. What I noticed is that I spend way too much time picking up after the boys. I saw that early in the week and cracked down quickly. They’re both old enough to pick stuff up and throw it away/put it away/shove it into the pits known as their bedrooms. I’ve also declared this summer The Summer Of Learning To Make Your Own Damned Breakfast. It’s done my soul good. They both know how to pour cereal and make a microwave egg, so they’re not going to starve. I just can’t handle morning meal complaints any more, so make it yourself or wait for lunch. I saw that I spend much more time than I thought preparing food. That amuses me greatly, as I am not a fan of cooking. I do it, I do it well, it’s just not something I loooove to do. But. Most of the time on food prep was just that: food preparation, not cooking a meal. We joined a CSA this summer, and so have a lot of produce coming through the door every week. I want it to be easily accessible and ready to eat, so I have to wash/cut/saute/freeze for later so it doesn’t go bad. (I’m not the only one doing this, either; quite a few of my friends are learning to can and dehydrate and freezer prep food this summer). I consider this time spent on food prep to be well worth it, because it’s a place where I am truly living my values. With the various food sensitivities in this house, I have to be considerably more mindful (ooh, there’s that word again!) about meals and snacks. I spent a lot of time doing paperwork for my new job, and then doing the new job. I love that it’s flex hours from home, it’s the ideal situation for me at this point in my life. While I spent a lot of time with the boys (it is summer, after all!), it was mostly car and errand time. I did play Wii with them for awhile, and we love to hang out and wrestle and have tickle-fights, but no long stretches of Together Time. I feel this should bother me, but it doesn’t. I’m not their primary entertainment, and I refuse to be. They are better off entertaining themselves or each other. We do go do things as a family (museums and movies are favorites), and often have family pizza movie night like we did last Friday, but I’m not going to be Playmate #1. Too much time last week was spent in running errands, even with stacking them together to do all at once. Need to work on that. As much as I may disagree, I am getting plenty of sleep and need to drag my sorry ass out of bed earlier. Sleeping past 6:30 on a weekday will have to end; I’ll truly enjoy the day better if I get up a few hours earlier. I spent hardly any time at all reading, and this breaks my heart. My parents used to joke about surgically removing books from my hands when I was a kid. I lost that when I started college and have struggled with making time to read ever since. Most of my reading is done while eating, which doesn’t lend itself to concentration or conversation. Finally, I noticed that my most productive time is between about 10 am and 4 pm. Before 10 is the best time for me to do mindless stuff (hmmm…mindful vs. mindless) like going to the gym (which I didn’t do enough of last week because I started a new job and was still figuring out how to balance it all), planning out the day, tidying up the house. Mindless stuff. After 4 I just want to get dinner going, find the wine/margarita/gin and tonic, and start to wrap up the day. So those six productive hours have to be used for everything else.

After doing this challenge, I have a much better appreciation of my time and what I could be doing with it. Knowing that I have 168 hours a week and I’m getting plenty of sleep, I just need to resolve to be more mindful with the remaining hours. Not everything has to be done every.single.day. So, with that in mind:

• I want to go to the gym four days a week
• I want to read every day
• I want to scrapbook/play with photos two days a week
• I want to write every day
• I want to work on increasing community on this blog every other day
• I want to spend time with Tom every day
• I want to spend time with the boys every day
• I want to choose a project from the list and work on it three days a week
• I want to work every day
• I want to be more effective with my time
• I want to spent less time in mindless pursuits, so I can work towards a mindless vacation (yo, Disney Cruise Line, I’m looking at you)
• While I want to spend less time on the computer and relying on technology, most of what I do is computer-based. I want to be more mindful of my time on the computer.
• I do not want to become a slave to the clock, for that will only make my miserable

Nothing earth-shaking there, eh?

It’s all about mindfulness and intention. Now. I intend to hit the shower and start my day.

With shaved legs.

Again, yes, I realize Day Seven was yesterday. I do also realize that with better time management that I probably could have gotten this posted last night. But I do know one thing: Dinner Date Night is sacred and I wasn’t getting back on the computer. So, the log:

6:00 am: Mistakenly up with the boys because I thought it was later than it was. No Father’s Day Breakfast in Bed Surprise is worth getting up at 6 am on a Sunday. A had already been up for an hour.
6:03 am: Passed out on couch after threatening the boys with pink nail polish and Princess videos if they woke me.
7:00 am: Breakfast in bed to Tom, snuggling with the fam in bed
7:45 am: Breakfast, paper
9:30 am: Cleaned up
10:15 am: Toy Story 3
1:15 pm: Lunch
2:45 pm: Emails
3:00 pm: Pay bills (I live such an exciting life)
3:30 pm: Emails, Twitter
4:30 pm: Pick garlic scapes from the garden (MMmmm…), Twitter, emails
5:00 pm: Update iPhone (ooh, got the new iOS4 today…it’s glitter and fairies and unicorns farting rainbows all wrapped up in a tidy little package), Shutterfly (which took forever because Safari kept crashing on the site)
5:45 pm: Clean kitchen, reboot laundry
6:00 pm: Talk to my SIL about wedding photos I want to order
6:30 pm: Get boys dinner
6:45 pm: Chat with a friend who stopped by to pick up our old sandbox
7:15 pm: Boys to bed (early because of Dinner Date Night; they read until 8 pm)
7:30 pm: Dinner Date Night (dinner with the movie 2012, which couldn’t have been any more over the top)
10:oo pm: Bed
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So there ya go. Seven days of keeping a time log. I learned a few things, was surprised by a few things, and wasn’t surprised by other things. So glad I did this; I highly recommend it if you’ve been wondering where time has been going.

Ooh, a rare double post! Mark the calendar. Taking notes on my daily time log has become habit; I think that’s a good thing. I do recognize that I’m more aware of my time.

7:30 am: Hauled self out of bed after an extended puppy-pile cuddle with the whole fam damily
8:30 am: Take the boys’ computer to my Computer Guru, run to Hobby Lobby, grocery store
10:30 am: Read blogs
11:00 am: Food prep (Quinoa Tabbouleh, Jicama salad, lunch prep)
1:00 pm: Lunch
1:30 pm: Cleaned kitchen
2:00 pm: Emails, cleaned up online stuff
4:00 pm: Practiced duets with a friend for my last day playing at church
5:00 pm: Chair massage from aforementioned friend who is studying to be a massage therapist
5:30 pm: Dinner with friend and her family
6:30 pm: Hang with friends
8:00 pm: Boys’ showered and bed
8:45 pm: Help Tom with his Google calendar and syncing
9:00 pm: Read blogs
9:45 pm: Start blog posting
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And because I am all about being exciting and hip and cutting-edge, I’m going to rock this couch for the rest of the night. I know you’re jealous.

Yes, day 5 was yesterday. I made the executive decision to hang out with my husband and crash on the couch instead of posting the day’s log. I’m making up for it now; he and I are both crashed on the couch with our respective laptops open, typing away. We’re bringing sexy back, I tell ya what!

7:00 am: Up, breakfast, hang out with the boys, plan the day
9:00 am: Get cleaned up
9:45 am: Catch up on emails
10:00 am: #gtchat on Twitter
11:00 am: Talked to my mom, bandaged knees (if this week is any indication we’re going to run out of bandaids on a regular basis), scheduled J’s 6th birthday party
Noon: Prepped lunch for the boys
12:30 pm: Signed A up for golf lessons/boys to camp
1:15 pm: Lunch for me
1:30 pm: New job paperwork
2:20 pm: Work making calls
3:45 pm: Get boys
4:15 pm: Fix boys’ computer, business call, start pizza dough, make dinner, mail, hang with the fam
6:30 pm: Movie pizza dinner
8:30 pm: Boys to bed
9:00 pm: Hang out with Tom (aka pass out on the couch watching TV)
11:30 pm: Stumble to bed
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Truly, I live a life on the edge.

Okay, day four. Things are going well, I’m noticing some stuff. Wrapping my brain around it all. I’ll paste here what I wrote this morning on Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours Forums page on Facebook:

Halfway through the week, I’m surprised and not by what I’ve found. I spend a lot more time than I thought cleaning up after my boys. At 9 and almost 6, they can do more. I’ve also started making them make their own breakfasts; I’m tired of the whining in the morning over what I’ve made. Okee dokee then, you’re on your own. I spend a lot of time running around: taking the boys places, running errands. Even though I do stack them up to mostly do on one day, it adds up. And I multi-task waaaayyyyy too much. Eating while checking email, or catching the headlines on my iPhone while combing out my wet hair. It’s not terribly efficient, and makes me feel like I run around like a crazed chicken and get nothing done. I’d like to work to the point where the only multi-tasking I do is hearing the washing machine run as I do something else.
What I *would* like to do more of is easy. I’d like to write more, scrapbook more, read more. When it’s something that’s important to me, something I truly love to do, I tend to put it off until everything else is done. Then I either never get to it or I’m too tired to follow through. This was a problem in college when I was a flute performance major and often had that feeling about practicing for hours on end. (Work around: schedule a lot of recitals so you HAD to practice).
What I’ve noticed as I keep the log is that I’m a lot more aware of what I’m doing with my time. I’m keeping my online play time down (though it did creep back up yesterday). I’m finding that 15 minutes isn’t too little to do a quick weed of the garden boxes or brainstorm with the boys what we want to do this summer. I’m looking at time in a different way.
Now. To just *finish* the book! In my defense, I have to wrest it from my husband first…

So there ya go. Insight mid-week. Here’s today’s log.

7:00 am: Up, cleaned up, start laundry
8:00 am: Breakfast (damn, mornings are soooo peaceful when you insist the boys make their own breakfasts and you just get to sit and watch and drink coffee! Ahhhh…)
8:30 am: Plan the day, emails
9:30 am: Playgroup
11:30 am: Lunch
12:15 pm: New job paperwork
12:45 pm: Boys to camp
1:15 pm: Work at new job
3:45 pm: Get boys from camp
4:00 pm: Get veggies from CSA, Walmart. Here you see the two facets of my split personality: organic vegetables from a local farm, and the world’s largest merchant of crap. Yes, I did indeed check my soul at the door, thanks for asking
5:00 pm: Reboot laundry, feed dog, random household stuff (ok, honesty check here…I really can’t remember what the hell I did for this hour…)
6:00 pm: Tastefully Simple party at a friend’s house. Here I not only fell off the detox diet wagon, I leapt off head first with a smile on my face. That was one fiiiine drink. Or three.
8:00 pm: Tuck boys in, check on A who is having the Allergy Attack From The Black Lagoon. Poor kid looks like he’s been slugged in the eyes repeatedly with a frozen carp.
8:30 pm: Wash and prep the CSA produce….and this is only the beginning. Dum dum dummmmm!!!!! It gets harder and takes longer as the summer goes on. In fact, I have stuff cooking upstairs that I might want to go check on before the house is nothing but a pile of organic cinders.
9:30 pm: Write this post, IM on Facebook with a dear friend of mine. Actually, the oldest friend I have, we’ve known each other since kindergarten. Facebook, for as much as you suck privacy donkey danglies, I love you for reconnecting the two of us.
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The rest of the night will be me turning off MacDreamy and falling face-first onto the pillow. Well, maybe a wee snack first, but then, definitely, face smack.

I’m starting to see patterns now in how I spend my time. Like, I spend more time than I should picking up after the heathens I call my sons. It’s not noted on my log because it’s a few minutes here and a few minutes there, but as I’m more aware of my time, holy hell do I spend a lot of minutes doing that. Gonna end. I’m also more aware of how much I multi-task, and I think that may be why I feel like I never really get anything accomplished.

I’d also sell my sons for a glass of wine right now. Or chocolate. Or bacon. Or chocolate covered bacon washed down with wine. Bloody detox diet. I have a Tastefully Simple party to attend tomorrow night, followed by book club (haven’t read the book…sigh), and by God I’m going off that diet for tomorrow night!

Digression, digression…

Today’s log.

7:45 am: Drag sorry ass out of bed, eat breakfast while reading emails/Facebook (I’ve started making the boys make their own breakfasts; I’m sick of the whining and complaining about what I make that early in the day)
8:45 am: Get cleaned up, tidy up the house
9:55 am: Read Sunday comics, email, Facebook, Twitter
10:45 am: Plan the summer with the boys
11:15 am: Gardening
12:00 noon: Mutter nastily at MacDreamy why I can’t open an Excel file with Mac’s Numbers, prepare boys’ lunches
12:45 pm: Boys to camp
1:00 pm: Conference call for new job while sitting in car…dash home
1:20 pm: Continue conference call at home
2:00 pm: Set up Excel/Numbers fix, fill out new job paperwork
2:30 pm: Lunch while reading emails
3:00 pm: Renew Illinois teaching certificate online because I can’t find the paper copy and yes, it really did take an entire freaking half hour of my life
3:30 pm: Phone calls
3:45 pm: Get boys from camp
4:00 pm: Library, renew subdivision’s membership cards so I can embarrass myself in a swimsuit in public this summer
4:30 pm: Hang with boys
4:45 pm: Emails
5:00 pm: Prep dinner
5:30 pm: Dinner
6:30 pm: Emails, set up HootSuite (which is giving me more than a few fits)
7:00 pm: Call around to find sitter for next Friday night. Seriously teens, I pay well. Quit growing up and going out.
7:30 pm: Supervise showers, bedtime stories, tuck in boys
8:30 pm: Write this post
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The rest of the evening will likely be read, avoid looking at the box of wine on the fridge, maybe some TV, ignore the wine calling me, order Father’s Day gifts for my dad and FIL, and pretend that water tastes like wine. No, please, no Jesus comments on that last one.

With a time log keeping me honest and a new job, I really picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue…erm…give up wine.

If there’s one thing this challenge is doing for me this week, it’s keeping me honest as to how I actually do spend my time. I feel more structured, somehow. I don’t think I was squandering my time before, but now I’m truly planning out my time a little more carefully. Kinda. Still wondering where the hell the time is going.

6:30 am: Slap off alarm whilst thinking profane thoughts about all manners of sound before coffee, get cleaned up, get boys up
7:30 am: Breakfast
8:00 am: Boys to dentist, read “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think” while waiting (they’re so darned efficient there I barely got two pages read)
9:00 am: Played Wii with boys, had my ass handed to me by a couple of whelps
9:45 am: Costco with boys. Why do I do this to myself?
11:15 am: Unpack foods, clean kitchen pantry, make boys’ lunches
12:30 pm: Lunch
12:45 pm: Boys to camp
1:15 pm: Blog writing
2:15 pm: Cleaned the unholy amount of produce I purchased at Costco
3:00 pm: Emails
3:45 pm: Get boys from camp
4:15 pm: Finish produce prep (seriously, I’m talking pounds here), clean kitchen, clean out fridge so aforementioned produce has a place to hopefully not rot
5:45 pm: Dinner and clean up
6:45 pm: Prep for training meeting for new job
7:00 pm: Training
8:30 pm: Emails and Facebook farting around
9:30 pm: Write this post
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The rest of my night will likely be spent watching Family Guy, reading a mindless magazine, and wishing to high hell I could have a glass of wine. Darned detox diet.

Good news: I fixed my email. Bad news: took for-freaking-ever. Good news: I am now gainfully employed and start on Wednesday. Bad news: OHMYGODIHAVEAJOBANDHOWTHEHELLAMIGOINGTOFITITIN????

Enter the 168 Hours Challenge. Let’s see how today looked, mkay?

6:30 am: Growl at iPhone alarm clock, take Synthroid, turn back over in bed
8:00 am: Finally haul butt out of bed (hey, it’s summer!), have breakfast (oh coffee, how I love thee)
8:30 am: Boys finally stumble downstairs as I contemplate checking for pulses, make them breakfast
9:00 am: Shower, make the bed, start some laundry, plan the day
10:00 am: Start blog post
10:10 am: Holy crap, I forgot to make lunches…make lunches
10:30 am: Rec center, where I truly feel every second of missing the last three weeks of weight-lifting
12:00 noon: Lunch with the boys at the rec center, return video to the library across the parking lot
12:55 pm: Drop boys off at Lego Camp and stumble to the car (worked legs today)
1:00 pm: Run errands. Run more errands. Contemplate hiring assistant to run errands for me
2:45 pm: Household stuff
3:00 pm: Check emails (hey! still broken!), return phone calls
3:45 pm: Get boys from camp
4:15 pm: Try to fix email, more phone calls
4:45 pm: Write blog post
5:30 pm: Blog reading in reader
5:45 pm: Dinner
6:45 pm: Prep detox-diet-approved (sigh) foods for tomorrow, clean kitchen
7:45 pm: Return phone call, become gainfully employed
8:00 pm: Kiss boys goodnight (oh, thank you Tom, for herding them through showers!)
8:20 pm: Finish decorating the living room vases that were only a seven year search
8:30 pm: Fixing email (Thank you, Dr. Google, and the very generous forums, for the PITA INSTRUCTIONS TO FIX A MACINTOSH!!!)
9:30 pm: Facebook play
9:40 pm: Start this blog post
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I fully intend for the rest of this evening to say:
10:oo pm: Finish blog post, have a snack because this detox diet sucks and damn I want a glass of wine
10:15 pm: Crawl into bed to read a mindless magazine because that’s all that’s left in ye olde brain
10:30 pm: Turn off light and pass.out.

The terrible irony about this post on time management is that it has taken at least five days to get it written and several hours today. For someone who wants to be a writer when she grows up, a two week absence here is inexcusable. In my defense, as weak as it may be, things have been a little crazy around here:

• Driven across four states to get home from Chicago
• Volunteered at Camp Invention
• Endured a quick bout of the flu
• Endured a quick bout of my son’s stomach flu
• Unpacked from aforementioned trip for four, on the road for 11 days
• Unpacked from my scrapbooking trip of two months ago
• Broke my blog (nothing you can see, but I can)
• Cleaned my office
• May have found gainful employment that doesn’t involve peeing in a cup, hunting down administrators from ten years ago, or turning tricks on Colfax.
• Broke my email…sigh…and still broken…Up next, the whole Interwebz!

While it appears that things have been accomplished, I don’t think a whole lot has, and it certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve done a whole lot. There are a lot of unaccounted hours there, even with the whole “running a household” thing. Time management has always been my bugaboo, and I’m rather tired of it. I finally got my energy levels back to the place where I thought I could get more accomplished every day and yet daily contentment eludes me.

Enter Laura Vanderkam. She is a freelance writer in New York; I know her as a co-author of the book “Genius Denied” and from her blog Gifted Exchange. Her newest book is “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.” I love the title of the book because I totally agree that I do have more time than I think, I just have a hard time finding it. The number refers to the number of hours in a week. I had originally planned to give a little run-down on the book, but um, I haven’t finished reading it yet. Right there is the second terrible irony of this post: I haven’t had the time to read the book on time management for the post on time management that has taken me five days and several hours to write.

This week Laura is hosting a 168 Hours Challenge at her 168 Hours blog. Seven days of logging where the time goes. Because I have a little issue with perfectionism (sigh…), I have a clipboard at my side all day and I’m just tallying away. I plan to post every night where my time went, hopefully with little or no comment; I don’t want to analyze anything until the very end. No point in beating myself up right before going to bed.

So come join me. I know, I know, it’s the end of the day and who can remember what they did all day? I dunno, guesstimate. You don’t have to be as crazy organized as me. Swing over to the Manage Your Time part of Laura’s website and download a log sheet. Fill it in. Then join the conversation on Facebook, on Twitter, or post to your own blog.

I know where my time so far today has gone, and I’m pretty sure I know where it’s going tonight. So if you hear loud and heartfelt profanity, it’s just me trying to fix my email or blog without wine because I’m a good wifey and doing a detox diet with Tom.

There. Forty-five minutes for the log.

Because I’m working to live in the NOW, right NOW I’m telling myself learning to write posts on the iPhone is important and not just ’cause I’m too lazy to get up and walk across the room to MacDreamy. Learning trumps laziness, so let’s all believe that story, m’kay? Sadly, that means no links, ’cause apparently that option doesn’t exist on a mobile device. Sigh…
If, in the middle of the day, you noticed a general gleefulness running through your veins, that was because I was at IKEA and my joy overfloweth. I whistled, I skipped, I giggled, I’m making up all of this. I was sedate as a nun, albeit one with a big shit-eating grin plastered between the nose and chin. Truly that store has such allure because we don’t have one in Denver, but I did find quite a few things on my list and thus I am happy. Nothing like a little “Jen Porn” to brighten a gloomy day. It only got better with a trip to Trader Joe’s for two cases of Three Buck Chuck and killer peanut butter cups.
But the best part was lunch and dinner with two different old friends. I rarely get to meet up with old friends when in town, so two in one day is wonderful. Add to that the dinner I had last night with Christina of Ends With 8741 and the meetup tomorrow with Kim of Hormone-Colored Days, and I’m a happy camper. As great as it is to hit shops I don’t usually get to visit, getting together with my friends is so much better.
Tomorrow we’re back to making memories with the boys by going for Dim Sum (I’ll try to avoid the gluten poisoning I got last time) and visiting the Museum of Science and Industry. There’s a new weather exhibit, and all three of my guys are excited to go. I just love watching them. Memories in the making.
Aaannnnd…iPhone is nearly out of juice. The price of laziness, I suppose.
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This month’s topic for NaBloPoMo is “Now.”