How being time-honest made me feel less stressed about my to-do list
- Lyndsay Ansell
- Uncategorized
- Aug 23, 2021
- 1
Hands up if this internal monologue sounds familiar:
“I really must answer that customer’s email from late last week, which reminds me; I also need to email the company our family holiday is booked through soon, I wonder if we need to take any garden toys with us? I should really make time to do some weeding this week. Maybe that will count as exercise, I really should do more exercise in general, maybe I could do a quick 5 minutes of yoga now? But that mountain of washing up on the side won’t wash itself. Gah – the baby’s awake – is the nursery bag packed?!”
I’m not sure if it’s a result of having a 2 year old, or doing my whole life from home now (rather than having a clean, physical split between work and home space) but lately I’ve often felt overwhelmed by all the ‘stuff’ to do. Wrestling between the things I needed to do, the things I wanted to do, oh and mum-ing and working seemed an exhausting, never-ending, thought-hole.
I’d constantly make lists, or look at existing lists, and just generally be annoyed that things either weren’t getting ticked off at all, or if they were getting ticked, not enough of them were being ticked fast enough.
One particularly stressed-out day of feeling utterly useless, I did what any other project-management trained individual would do; I sat down in front of a blank spreadsheet.
The exercise I completed isn’t a new concept – other ‘productivity methodologies’ out there recommend doing exactly this (for example check out Michael Hyatt & Co’s ‘Ideal Week’ https://michaelhyatt.com/ideal-week/). I found it really helped me feel more in control.
I mapped out each day of the week and each hour of the day. Then I went through, as honestly as possible, and blocked out any time with fixed commitments. For example, on a Tuesday morning before the childcare cavalry arrives (also known as ‘Grandad’) – I need to be looking after my son. As he’s 2, he pretty much needs constant entertaining/supervision otherwise he will eat something he shouldn’t/try and fly off the stairs. By blocking out that time, I know that I can’t really achieve anything else during that window, so I shouldn’t try. On the contrary, while he’s at nursery on a Friday afternoon I know I have that window of time available, so I could think more about how best to use that time, and realistically how much I could achieve within it.
By mapping out each hour of each day, and being really honest with myself about where my time goes, I was able to see ‘on paper’ that between childcare, work, and everyday necessities (like eating and washing) – there wasn’t actually that much time left over. The results were:
- I stopped beating myself up about not doing enough ‘stuff’ – turned out I was doing pretty well already considering the time I had available
- I also stopped over-reaching and setting myself unattainable goals. Turns out that with an hour on a Friday afternoon it’s unrealistic to think that I’m going to be able to weed the entire garden, learn a new language, and bake a banana loaf. (Mmm, banana loaf…)
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by ‘stuff’ too, I’d recommend being time-honest with yourself and mapping out all your existing commitments (and are they really commitments?!) so that you can see what time you really have available, before you start to think about if you’re making the most of that time. It helped me feel much more in control and I’m refining it all the time. For instance, I may have underestimated the time it would even take me to write this blog! Whoops.
LOVE this. I’m going to do the ideal week thing too and show myself how much “free” time I do or don’t have.