For a while, I felt frazzled. Last week, I went to see my reflexologist and I told her that I felt off. Tired and scattered. All over the place. How I simply couldn’t manage my time and everything that is going on. She chuckled and we talked more about how I was feeling. In all of the time she’s worked with me, she said she has never seen my body so calm. Yes, I’m a little crazed and I am still learning how to balance my time, but it’s a good crazed. I’m healing. After all of these years…
Work right now… It’s like we’re in this garden and we thought, cool, this rose bush will look bitchin’ when it blooms. Then when we went to get rose food, that thing went all don’t feed the Gremlins after midnight and now there are hundreds of rose bushes. We are surrounded by something so beautiful and amazing, but tending a garden that grew so fast can still get overwhelming at times. But it is so beautiful that I wouldn’t want it any other way.
But time… I had to take my time back. More specifically, I had to start managing my time properly. First, I had to figure out how to do it and what to do. Whenever I feel the time management crunch, I always go back to the method that I’ve written about before. I need to handle things in easy chunks. Because I can make 15 minute chunks.
I had two things that were major projects on the task list; Finish Jenny Lawson’s book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir).
The second task to complete was cleaning the garage.
So each night, I took fifteen minutes to read until I finished the book on Friday night. Saturday, I planned to take at least fifteen minutes to start going through some of the boxes in the garage. But those fifteen minutes were pretty productive. So I kept going. With Brian’s help, we finished cleaning the garage in one chunk. There was a tiny bit to be done on Sunday, but that didn’t even take fifteen minutes.
Here is the list of the other things that I want to make sure that I spend fifteen minutes per day doing:
- Playing with the cats. Full on play time. Exercise the kitties.
- Talk to Brian about his day. So many days, couples are tired and it is easy to sit together and watch tv without saying a lot. I want to make sure that we get at least fifteen minutes of good conversation in.
- Reading for pleasure. I got a bunch of books from the library that were topics related to time management and work-related. I don’t want to read them. I really want to read Probiotics For Dummies.
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Cleaning different areas so things don’t get overwhelmed.
These are the little things. I’m also working on other bigger things that take a longer block of time. Fitness is being reintroduced to my life. (That’s a separate post.) So far, no injuries. I’m doing some interesting freelance work. I want to blog more consistently because I’ve got a ton of posts in draft that I need to flesh out and finish. I’ve got some other really exciting projects coming up.
All it takes is fifteen minutes.
I love this! Everyone can do 15 minutes! I need to incorporate this!
I also read another book recently. You get 168 hours in a week. Can I really not find 5 hours out of 168 for fitness? That makes it seem so silly when you do the math that way.
I swear – the 15 minutes method works wonders – when one actually uses it. I’ve been the Procrastination Wench for so long now that the overwhelming feeling hit a couple weeks ago and I just lost my daggone mind. Reading this just reaffirmed the whole “15 Minutes Aly – just a little bit a day” method and I’m about to dive in!
How did you like Jenny’s book?
The book was great. That deserves a full post. She has such a distinct voice. I love it.
Huh. Never thought of things that way. I get myself lost on the computer and don’t move for way too long then wonder why the day has slipped away or I have a bitchin’ headache. I even say I have no time to read a book. How hard can it really be to devote 15 minutes every day to it?
Wise words, Danielle. Wise words.
I’m very happy to see the cats at the top of that list there. I’ve made it a point to play with Doggle first thing when I come home for a few minutes, no matter what. Everything is put down, and we play until his Doggle ADD takes over or he decides he’s done. It’s really not that much time because he has a really short attention span but it is awfully satisfying.
I’m now trying to figure out how to carve out some time for blogging. Like you, I previously had a bunch in draft. Then they all published and I was back to nada again. But it’s important so it should get its 15 minutes too.
So glad that work-wise, things are growing fantastically, though, and that your reflexologist is seeing positive change in you! <3
I love my RSS! Otherwise I would have missed this. But because I did see it, I may be late, but I made up just such a list – kept it simple at 5 things – & for two days now, I’ve kept my RSS and email cleaned up, walked my dog, talked to my hubby about his day, checked with my kids on their school work, and read for pleasure. It’s been months since I walked my dog – and maybe it’s not the big exercise that I really need (I need to lose like 50 pounds), but it’s simple, it’s a start, and it made me feel good. So thank you!
I am struggling with time management right and stress management right now.
And toddler tantrums.