You do remember, of course, the basic rules of math that began roughly in the first grade: If your answer (in this case, an amount of time) remains the same, then in order to add something (a new activity), you must subtract something else. Right? You are only awake for eighteen or nineteen hours per day. You have to take a shower and brush your teeth (if your plans include the presence of other people). You must eat, drink, and pee. Many of us must fit an eight (or more) hour work day in there. What’s left? Hmm. Somewhere in the range of eight hours, I think. What will you do with your eight hours?
I’ve talked, at length, about finding your passion and allocating time for it. No matter what. Who knew, however, that we could be passionate about so many things? My kids, while demanding, are also a whole bucket of fun. Writing still invigorates me like the first intake of air on a crisp winter morning. Conversations with my husband often lead me to giggle like I’m thirteen again. Also, I have to nurture my body for as long as I have it, so there’s that fitness thing again and healthy eating. I also like to learn new things, and even though it’s taken me fifteen years to do it, I’ve joined the legions in our nation’s virtual classrooms, headed for a graduate degree.
Alas, have mercy already! There were only eight waking hours left. Per day. And I’ve gone and given most of them, for at least a year, to a Master’s program! So back to basic math: To add, I must take away. I shall not take away from you if you read this blog because I still have so much to share about making time. (Plus, I’m bound to have some epiphanies along this path!) I shall try mightily not to take away from my family. I shall try to keep following my own advice.
I will be taking a year-long hiatus from novel-writing (there’s that pesky subtraction), but I can share the happy news that my latest title is finally available for sale in the meantime. It’s called “The Son I Seek” and you can order it online or through your local bookseller. Here’s a copy of the promotional bookmark:
For tonight, I shall close the laptop and force my eyes to shut so I can get up early and exercise. Until next time, keep stealing moments to pursue the things you love the most so that you can inspire the rest of us.
I’ve reconnected with my dear blog by doing a read-through, and I’ve now thanked the Almighty, that I started my first post with the “Something’s Gotta Give” Theory! One year ago, in September, I hung up my cooking mitts and took a full-time job working five days a week for the first time since having baby number three.
Something’s gotta give, for sure. In this case, those somethings have been sleep, exercise, luxurious days gardening and canning, shopping trips while kids were in school…and, oh, so painfully, time to write! Looking back at my days working part-time and giving advice to you, my reader, I’ve realized two things: I’ve been a bit of an idealist (though a well-meaning one); and I need to follow some of my own advice!
To be fair to my career choice, I’ve taken tremendous satisfaction in becoming excellent at my job again, with daily practice giving me an interest I haven’t had in years. I have also taken on a commute with this job. I’m happy to say that I’ve taken my own advice on this: I use the 90 minutes extra to think about the writing projects I have in the works and expand upon them. I also use them to listen to music and decompress before facing the family again.
I still exercise in the mornings before work about three days a week. This I could do better on, but I find by Friday, the need to catch the extra sleep I need and I nix the half-hour-early wake up time. I’d like to go to bed earlier to accommodate an earlier rise, but I find my evening time after the kids go to bed to be critical to writing and editing. My afternoon nap is no longer optional, unfortunately.
Healthy eating is still part of our routine as a family, but I’ve found quicker ways to a healthy meal. Packaged salads are helpful, as are pre-cooked chicken strips and already-shredded cheese. Greek yogurt is my new savior for breakfast with a ribbon of almonds for some crunch. Crock-pot cooking has become essential in the colder months. Also, my kids are getting old enough to be of help and they can all make a pretty mean sandwich.
Here’s the beautiful thing about all the trials and tribulations of joining forces with working moms: I feel like the tricks I learn about time-saving now really apply to a much broader group, and a much more challenged group, of women. So while the idealist in me has been massacred several times over in the last year, the optimist in me realizes that the desire to eek out time to write, have fun, spend time with the kids and my spouse, will conquer any amount of challenge thrown into my 24-hour day.
Stayed tuned for more caveats as the occur to me. In the meantime, enjoy this fabulous (and fast) summer recipe for dinner (feeds six):
6 – Large Flour or Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas
1 – Bag of Brocco-Slaw (shredded Broccoli, Carrots, and Cabbage found in the Produce Section)
1 – Small Bag of Shredded Cheddar or Mozzarella Cheese
12 – Slices of Thick-Sliced Deli Turkey or Chicken
Ranch Dressing and/or Sweet Asian Chili Sauce for flavor
Place a Tortilla on a plate, put two slices of Deli Meat in the middle. Sprinkle Brocco-Slaw and Cheese over the top. Garnish with Ranch Dressing and/or Sweet Chili Sauce. Tuck both ends over contents and roll the tortilla shut. Cut in half on the diagonal and serve with strawberries and veggie crisps.
Do you ever feel categorized, like the path you’ve chosen in life led you in such a successful, self-defining direction that you’ve never dared to deviate from it? Do you feel ‘pigeonholed’ by your family and friends? Perhaps you don’t know what this means, so let’s examine the phrase. The verb ‘pigeonhole’ means: 1. To place or file in a small compartment or recess.2. To classify mentally; categorize.3. To put aside and ignore; shelve. Let’s take an example: Supermom–you pride yourself that your kids are not only credible athletes year-round, they’re raising steers for the county fair, taking ballroom dancing lessons, and learning the guitar. Yes, you have amazing kids who will achieve even more amazing things. But your husband still wants you to iron his shirts, after all, you stay at home most of the time. (Yeah right, your minivan has more miles on it than a UPS truck!) Your kids want you to sew their costumes for their recital. Your mother wrote the local paper to have you nominated for mother-of-the-year and they want to interview you to find out what makes you tick (besides the adrenaline that drives you to speed through yellow lights en route from soccer practice to the feed store before it closes.) The school wants you to become the parent-teacher liason (because what other mom encounters so many other parents in her daily life?) Being a mom, being truly brilliant at it, defines you. Your greatest satisfaction is the admiration you and your family glean from being so accomplished. Well done.
But wait, isn’t there more to you than motherhood? Weren’t you an exchange student to Peru fifteen years ago, when your plan was to train in medicine and then become a missionary to South America? No? Didn’t you win a blue ribbon in photography at the fair just five years ago, and have several of the judges urge you to go into professional portrait photography? No? Aren’t you the math whiz that makes Sudoku look like child’s play? No? You see what I’m asking here, right? If motherhood is all that makes you ‘you’, then you’ve been officially ‘pigeonholed’.
It’s easy to take satisfaction in something we do well, and to repeat as often as necessary. It’s just that human beings are so much more multi-faceted than that. Just because you do something well does not mean that you are passionate about that thing. You could be good at pole-dancing, but that may not translate into anything in your life but a way to work in some cardio. I’m a great sonographer–you give me a patient and an ultrasound transducer and I can make snapping clear pictures look as easy as frosting a cake. I spent years being great at my job, only to find that my true passion was as different from science as religion. While I was nurturing my third child, well on my way to being pigeonholed as super-baby-mom, I took that mold and dropped it on a marble floor, shattering it. I refused the label, defied the convention of new mommy-hood, and took to a new hobby–writing. My husband, a gainfully-employed computer-tech, propped his shovel against the house one day after planting hops, and announced that he’d always wanted to be a farmer. Inside of two months, we moved from town to a working alfalfa ranch where he’s further diversified into alternative energy and carpentry (and fatherhood). The fact is that it would take one helluva tricky labeler to say just who and what we are.
So go ahead, please, and discover who you are, not who everybody thinks you are. Your best creative self is dying to come out. Your passion yearns to be spent. Work hard to redefine yourself, to break molds and form new ones. By refusing to be ‘pigeonholed’, your possibilities are limitless.
If you look at the glossy covers of the magazines at the checkout stand, it’s easy enough to see the Hollywood supermoms–Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner–looking svelte, gorgeous, and, most discouraging of all, effortless. Realistically, though, how many of them do you think could stay trim without a personal chef to prepare their under-1000 calorie diet and without their buff fitness coach? How much work do you think they’d get done without their half a dozen nannies? Plus, how awful do you think their outfits would be if their stylist wasn’t there to check any missteps?
Don’t look at these women and woe the state of your own meager bank account! I understand your quandary–After all, wouldn’t we all like to have Bob Green on speed-dial and Ken Paves waiting in the wings to style our hair? There is a lesson to be learned from these Hollywood moms, though: When you have too much to do, and it is your job to appear naturally confident and in control, you MUST delegate, delegate, delegate.
So how does this apply to us busy people living a ‘normal’ life? If you need help, admit it first, and then start with your family. If your kids are too little to be of help, do you have a mother, an in-law, or a sibling with any extra time to help you defray your overwhelming list of tasks? Don’t be afraid to ask–there may be a chance to bond over the activity, or an opportunity for you to return the favor when you’re less stymied. If the whole family is old enough to help, it’s time to divide tasks and conquer. Make a chore chart and assign each family member a task to carry out for the week. If your kids drag their feet, give them incentive–a movie night at the end of the week or a weekend dessert fest. My kids earn ‘Bear Points’ for doing chores. They get to be spent at ‘Build-A-Bear Workshop’ when they’ve earned enough points to go shopping.
If you’re still buried in an insurmountable number of tasks, make a list of these and take a look at it. Which of those tasks do you intensely dislike? Is it weeding the garden or scrubbing toilets? If you’re a writer, is it editing that you despise? Highly successful people will universally admit that they rarely perform the tasks they abhor most. They’re smart enough to be where they are, after all, and smart people hire someone to do the dirty work for them. Think you can’t afford to hire a housekeeper or gardener? Calculate how much time it would take to complete the job yourself. If you think of your time as money, how much does it cost you to do it yourself? (For example, if you think of your time as worth, say, $20 per hour, and it took you 5 hours to complete the gardening, that’s $100!) Surely you could hire the job out for less than that. Plus, it’s worth the preservation of your state of mind to let someone else lighten your load. You’ll be more productive doing what you enjoy most and the peace of mind in that is truly immeasurable.
Epiphanies often strike during the most ordinary moments. Today, for example, I spent the morning with my girls, cleaning their very messy room. (We’re talking hurricane worthy here.) As a reward for all of our hard work, I took all of the kids shoe shopping. (Since it’s been a good month since we’ve had a decent snow storm, it didn’t seem fitting to make them keep wearing their winter boots.) Thus began our adventure into Retail-land. We live fifteen miles away from a town whose biggest accomplishment was the addition of a second stoplight fifteen years ago. As you can imagine, our choices are limited. We passed through the four or five viable options for retail shoe stores, found decent deals on adorable shoes, stopped along the way for milkshakes, and poured ourselves back into the car at about 6:30, exhausted. From the blissful silence of the backseat, I heard my oldest daughter: “This has been a really fun day, Mom. You know, usually, you’re stuck working on your computer all of the time. Today, you spent the whole day with us.”
She might as well have sucker-punched me, because I always thought she and her sister and brothers were too busy playing with each other whilst I immersed myself online or writing, to notice that I wasn’t with them. Silly me. Something as simple as an early spring shopping trip and milkshakes made my children feel like they had me all to themselves. I thought I had my priorities all figured out–I put my family first, above all else, right? Yeah, right. Not if you ask them. But theirs were not the mutterings of starving kids–if they need fed, I feed them nutritiously, nor were they the complaints of ill-dressed, ill-bathed rugrats–if they need baths or showers or decent clothing, I see to these needs too. What I am missing, and what my daughter spelled out clearly today, is that caring for my kids’ needs is not the same as meeting their emotional quotas.
They need more of my uncluttered, undistracted time. There’s so little time to begin with, isn’t there? But if I haven’t been filling it by addressing my top priority–my family–then what is it all for, really?
The take-away lesson here is not to tell you that I’ll be spending more time with my children and hanging up the laptop for the time being. That too would be foolish, because the computer is truly a writer’s lifeline. What I am going to do is rewrite my priority list and then I’m going to do a time log, logging all of my major activities during a forty-eight hour period. At the end of the forty-eight hours, I’m going to see how much time I spent doing the activities that I’ve said matter to me most. The results might be astounding, or they may be predictable, but the ‘test-time’ will give me a clear idea how much time I spend doing the things I most cherish. Obviously some habits need to change, but re-evaluating priorities lends habit-kicking focus. Try this exercise too and you’ll be well on your way to finding your best life. I know I can’t wait to get started.
My kids took mercy on me this morning and let me sleep in until eight. It felt great, except that I planned a whole slew of things to do today before the main event–the Super Bowl! From about 3:30 until 8, my hiney is going to be planted in front of the fifteen foot screen next door. I’m going to watch the game and I’m going to watch the commercials, and it’s going to be hard-hitting, knee-slapping, call-critiquing bliss. I’m really a jock at heart. Can you tell?
But, to the point of my post today: You notice that I have the game time planned. I also have little kids and a family to feed. So I’ve spent the morning stewing a chicken. After I finish this post, I’m going to strip that carcass and add all the goods to the broth, and I’m going to put it all on low in a crockpot and put it in the same vicinity as the big screen. I’m going to put the kids’ juice and our requisite brewskies in the fridge just ten feet away. I’m going to lay out chips and popcorn and carrot sticks to munch on while we wait for dinner time (at the half, approximately.) I have a PLAN, with a set GOAL in mind.
If you are a creative person, you must plan the time it takes to dedicate to your endeavor. Let’s just say it wasn’t football that my brain was fixated on. Let’s say it was working on my screenplay or hammering out the last few chapters of my current novel. If I’m going to be successful about making the time to do these things, then I must plan the time for them just like I’m planning to accommodate my family while I immerse myself in football land.
You have set priorities, so simply make sure you plan your day so that your highest priorities are met without compromising the writing goal you’ve set for yourself. I still exercised this morning. I still did three loads of laundry. I still made brunch for my family. I still did the dishes. I still went through stray papers. I still wrote my blog. But I’m still making time for my favorite pasttime, and you should too.
I’m going to cut this short to go make my soup. If it turns out yummy, I’ll post my recipe here next time. Plus, I’m going to lead you through a goal-setting session, a more specific way to get to that place you want to be as a writer.
I’ve talked previously about procrastination and its ability to cripple our creative efforts. Recently I’m finding my proscrastination driven by a healthy media overload. I’ve got two reality series and a soap opera recording on the DVR. I’ve got nearly two hundred friends to keep up with on a social networking site. I’ve got news to read on my home page… All of this adds up to a boatload of distractions for the well-meaning writer. If you’re going to eke out more time in your life for creativity, you (and I) are going to have to put media in the background, where it belongs.
Here is your first baby step: If you’ve taken time to make a nice dinner (or other meal) for your family, insist that all forms of media be shut off, and make your family sit down at the dinner table–no TV, no handheld devices, no radio, no mp3′s, and no cell phones. Make conversation as a family. Talk about your day. If your kids are older and this is too boring for them, try this: While you’re cooking, make a list of interesting social topics and let one member of the family pick a topic to discuss during mealtime. This is multi-tasking at it best too: You’ll open up lines of communication, and get your opinions about said topic across in an open forum where they’re free to express themselves too.
The next baby step? Monitor the amount of time you spend engrossed in each type of media. You’d do the same for your kids, right?
1) If you’re having trouble limiting your social networking time, get your egg timer or set the timer on your stove, and let it blare at you when your half-hour is up. Your ‘friends’ will understand. After all, they’re surely as time-strapped as you are.
2) If you must follow a certain TV show, be sure to record it so that you can fast-forward through advertisements, or so that you can watch it when time allows (such as on a lazy Sunday.) Also, by recording your shows, you can be aware of exactly how many series you’re watching. If there are too many series, it’s time to narrow that number down to the absolute favorites.
3) If you’re a sucker for magazine or newspaper subscriptions, then you should evaluate the number of these to see which you actually take the time to read. Are there any that you could receive digitally through the Internet or on a digital reading device? If there are magazines you love to read (and hold), put them in what I call ‘Strategic Points of Reading Opportunity’ aka The Back of the Toilet. (Most of my magazine perusal comes while I’m giving the kids a bath, or, that’s right, as I’m perched on the porcelain throne.) If you can’t possibly read all of the subscriptions you have, then consider donating them to a clinic or hospital waiting room or senior center.
4) Narrow down online shopping to the items you definitely need. Surfing the Internet to find out what’s on sale can be a rush, I know, but it’s also an easy way to waste tons of time. You might try the egg timer in this instance also.
Now that you’ve started to evaluate your media time, I’m sure there are ways for you continue to whittle it away. Be honest with yourself, first of all, and you’ll be on your way to magically finding more time in your day to do the creative things you fervently wish to accomplish.
It’s true what I’ve said: If you love to write, you will make time to do it. It’s just that, you’re busy, and the truth is also that I am too. Let’s see–there’s been holidays, tonsillectomies (2 kids at once), Christmas vacation, a holiday retreat during Thanksgiving. Thus, my absence from blogging for the last few months. If you’ll see fit to see past this small transgression, though, we’ll move on to the meat of my current post…
At the end of my last post, I promised to write about storage for your creative ideas. If you’ve worked at maximizing your mind-body health, your creative brain should be churning out ideas faster than you can say ‘Epiphany’. So what do you do with all of this information? You don’t want to lose any of it.
How many times have you had a dream early in the morning, you’ve awakened remembering a good portion of it, but you didn’t write the images and thoughts down as your brain recalled them for you? How much of that dream do you remember now? You might remember emotions, or there might be vague details that you can grasp, but unless your dream recurs, there’s only a tiny chance that you’ll recover the information, ever. What if you had written the details down, though? They’d still be there, right?
My most fluid and intelligent ideas strike me when I’m first waking up or while I’m contemplating sleep, thus the most efficient means of storing my ideas is to keep my notebook computer on my nightstand. The same could be accomplished by keeping journal pages or a diary at my bedside (if I didn’t write a whole lot slower than I type.) The point is: write those ideas down.
Of course, there are times when you can’t write your ideas down–like when you’re driving, or sitting in a staff meeting, or bathing your toddler. Thank goodness we live in a mobile society, because there are many inexpensive and low-tech solutions for idea storage, even when you can’t write them down. Several of today’s cell phone models are capable of storing verbal memos. Or, you could subscribe to a voicemail transcription service that types out your voice files and emails them to you. Even easier is a tiny, portable digital voice recorder. Many models can be kept on your keychain and can be easily plugged into a USB port to upload ideas to your computer when the device is full. (The trick is, and you wouldn’t laugh if you had four children conspiring against you, as I do–not to lose said device, ideas and all.)
If all else fails, most ideas will notch out a permanent place in your brain if they are repeated six times. I bet you always wondered why annoying commercials blared their phone number six times during the ad–scientific evidence supports retention of a number or fact that is repeated. If your epiphany has no tangible place to land, repeat it (to yourself–no sense alerting the looney bin) at least three to six times, and chances are that you’ll glom onto it long enough to get home and write it down.
Lastly, oh creative brother or sister, please, please, always have a back-up plan. To assure that your computer doesn’t lock up and swallow all of your information at some tragically inconvenient time, look into a secure, online data back-up service (such as Dell’s) that can remotely store your work. Or you can do like I do and back-up the important stuff on a memory stick on a regular basis and toss it into the fire safe.
I look forward to posting more throughout the New Year as we all work on becoming our best creative selves despite, or perhaps because of, the busy lives that we lead. Until then, adieu, and Happy New Year.
It’s a daily ritual: My two-year-old’s footsteps can be heard slapping across the kitchen floor and onto my bedroom hardwood. My arms reach out for him even before he throws his chubby arms upward to come snuggle with his Mommy and Daddy. It happens every morning, like clockwork, at seven a.m. Except that yesterday it was unusually dark when he did this. My husband took a bleary-eyed look at his cell phone. “It’s not even six yet!” He exclaimed, when our son gamely jostled him and stated, “I wan’ bekbas” (breakfast.) I peered at my alarm clock through one gritty eye. “It’s seven.”
“What the heck?” We both asked in unison. Oh yeah. Fall Back. No one told us. No one told our kiddos’ internal clocks either. That’s why we’ve spent the last two days dispirited and fatigued–bedtime is really here, only the clock says we have to muster for a whole hour more. It’s brutal, I tell you. Hence, I am taking this opportunity to espouse the incomparable benefits of napping. (And I’m not just talking to those under the age of six, either.) If you want to increase your creative productivity, it’s time for siesta.
Oh, glorious sleep, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
1) Studies show that 20 minutes of sleep in the afternoon provides more rest than 20 minutes more sleep in the morning.
2) Most people’s bodies naturally become more tired in the afternoon, about 8 hours after we wake up, so this is the ideal time for a ‘power nap’.
3) While an hour-long nap has the most restorative effect on the body, even fifteen minutes of light sleep or meditation can be enough to recharge for the rest of the day.
Do you remember laying your head on your desk in grade school when the teacher prompted you to take a rest? Even as a grown-up, you can find a hard surface and your own cozy arms just about anywhere. I remember how good that felt to just stare into the darkness between my elbows and shut out the bustle of the world. Make an effort to do this daily and your creativity is sure to reap the rewards. (Just think if you could recapture the creative genius of your fourth-grade self–who’s to say you can’t?)
Don’t feel guilty about napping, either.
In his book “Think Naked”, Marco Marsan, a man considered by the Fortune 500 to be one of America’s most inventive minds, says, “Napping has proved itself a powerful brain supercharger. When did we begin to equate naps with laziness? How many times have we bragged about how little sleep we received and were still able to perform? Well, it goes against the nature and the results from a 25-year study on the effects of napping. The study revealed that 92.5 percent of workers, after an afternoon nap, increased their productivity, their creativity, and their problem-solving skills.”
Pump yourself up with the good stuff: Powerful foods, plentiful exercise, spiritual levitation (wouldn’t that be cool?), and rejuvenating naps. I’m telling you, folks, your mind is going to be so well-greased that your shoes might slip while you’re racing to get all of those ideas down. So, the next time we convene, I’ll share some trade secrets for storing your ideas. Then you won’t end up flat on your fanny, wondering where they went!
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