Hours in a Week
Hours in a Week
There are 168 hours in a week. That seems like a lot of time, a lot of time. But then we start subtracting the obvious time consumers. We need to sleep and if I over exaggerate and say that we get about eight hours a night, we can subtract 55 hours, leaving 113 hours left. After sleep, work is a big time sucker. If we work about 40 hours we should probably put the work week at closer to 50 to account for lunch and commuting. What we are left with is 63 hours of everything else. Where the hell does all the time go.
At first I thought I could go and start adding up laundry, cooking, house cleaning, but that diverts from my point, which is that if I have 63 hours in my week I need to know where the hell that time goes. And once the time is gone and the week is over, am I happy with how I spent my time. So yes, I spend a lot of time in transition. I ride bikes to and from school with the minis and each trip takes me at least 30 minutes, one hour every day. Some days I have clients spread out, giving me little 30 minute time breaks. And then there is all the prep to make sure my days run smoothly.
And so here I am trying to make the best use of my hours in the week while still balancing time to just do nothing and not feel guilty. A few months ago I bought a really cool planner and every Sunday I sit down and put in my work schedule (which changes every week). I add in my minis schedule to my planner. And then I find time for my workouts and add those to my planner. Working out is not something I leave to chance. My schedules get pretty scattered at times and making sure I get my workouts in helps me keep my sanity and helps me be a better trainer.
But like training, I also schedule in my household and work chores. I can really easily get stuck in transition and end up wasting a lot of time. For instance I do not want to know how much time I spend on social media. I might have five minutes here and 20 minutes there, but social media is a time sucker. I use my scheduling and some pretty unique goals to keep myself out of transition as best as possible. But those small lulls in time make it really hard to not just waste that time. Those lulls sneak up on me without even realizing it, waiting for my coffee in the morning, waiting for dinner to come out of the oven. I try to multi task some of these things but honestly there are a lot of transitions in the day that just suck up time. I started carrying a book with me, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.
At the end of all the to do lists and work and sleep and child rearing, I need to have ample room for fun. I can multi task my fun, I really enjoy hanging out with my minis. But one of the things that is so easy to push aside is time to ourselves and time to just have fun. Life is filled with to do lists and the moment my laundry gets checked off my list, it is back on the list. And in the middle of all those loads of laundry, I need to set aside time to just have fun. If I could have it my way, I think I would like about 80 hours of fun every week. Since that is not a reality for me, I have make the most of my days, enjoy my work, enjoy parenting (most of the time) and then I put fun time in my daily planner.
Honestly, I just need more me time. Maybe a personal assistant that can take care of all the shitty jobs that have no ending, the laundry, paying bills, making food and cleaning. That way I can have more time. I don’t know exactly what I would do with that time, but I would start by taking up a new craft or sport. Maybe learning to sew or taking some cooking classes. Or maybe I can just keep doing what I am doing and try to waste less time in transition and more time on me. That may need to be my goal for next year.