Aint Wastin' Time No More

Ok, yes I am. Wasting time, that is. I suck at time management. Really suck. Suck the big suckaroo. I always have. I am late for everything, I make endless to-do lists, I can never get dinner on the table earlier than 7pm, and I never, ever feel like I am getting as much done as I should. Its seems like with all the regular household stuff that needs to happen (the boring stuff — cooking, cleaning, laundry, laundry, laundry, grocery shopping, errands, emptying the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher, over and over and over. The kid drop-offs, pickups, activities, playdates and on and on …) the stuff I want to do never gets done.

The to-do lists are all things I want to do; more freelance design work, yoga, art projects and more. Until very recently, all my time was spent doing things for other people. Now all three of my kids are in school, so I have almost six hours of uninterrupted time each day. It isn’t enough. Every day I make a to-do list and at the end of the day, I grump about what is still not done.

When I am working, I manage my time pretty well. I like my deadlines. Somehow, when I have a deadline, all the pieces of what I need to do become clear to me and I can organize my thoughts and manage my time. No deadline? Nothing gets done. For some reason I have trouble imposing deadlines on myself. One of my daughters writes up a schedule of when and how (down to the minute) she will do each piece of a school project weeks before it is due. She is in the third grade. Her sister is the same way. Somehow my children have a keen grasp on how to best manage their time that they obviously didn’t learn from me. My husband tells me that I look at everything that needs to be done and get overwhelmed instead of looking at each thing that needs to be done and completing it. He is probably right.

As anyone with children knows, living with kids creates what I like to call the Harrison Bergeron effect. Harrison Bergeron is a character in a Ray Bradbury story who lives in a society where everyone is made “equal” by controlling their intellect, talents, or appearance so no one person has any advantage over anyone else. In Harrison’s case, his thoughts are scrambled by a loud, screeching noise in his ears every few seconds so he can never have the chance to put two thoughts together. I think eleven years of hearing “MAMA!?!” every few seconds has done the same to me. I thought once I had a few kidless hours a day, my brain would recover and I wouldn’t lose my train of thought every few seconds, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

So I make lists, and more lists. I make lists of the lists I need to make. Some of the lists are on paper and some of them are just in my head. I would probably be happier and more satisfied with my day if I just filled my lists with items like “laundry” and “shower” and “pack lunches for kids” — that way at least I could cross some items off and at the end of the day, maybe I’d feel like my time wasn’t wasted.