time

[monkey]

how do people have time to do all the things they want? i mean, you got 8 hrs of work (most people), 1-2 hrs of commuting (both ways), it takes about an hour to get ready in the morning, then there's dinner and stuff at night taking up a few more, and sleep, you have to sleep. say you get 7 hrs. so now youve got maybe 4 hrs left, but if you have a significant other, 4 hrs tend to become 2hrs. and there's cleaning to do, and beauty shit (for womenz), and what if you want to read a book? or watch a movie? you cant hold it all off till the weekend, can ya? and what if youve got the kind of job that requires you to bring home stuff? OR what if you have kids?

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

[ScarySquirrel]

I just take my time.

[Dorothy Wood]

I don't know, you just do. actually, I don't know what I'd do if I had a job where I had to be neatly dressed. I've had one before, but that was the 90's, you could dress a little sloppier back then and still be in fashion.

[jabumbo]

my ideal workday would be 7-1 with no break for lunch

[enree erzweglle]

I don't usually need to sleep through the night so that helps a lot.

When I can lose time is in the down periods in between other bigger tasks. Like I might know that I have to start this one thing that'll last for 2 hours and I only have 20 minutes until that 2-hour thing starts. So rather than blow those 20 minutes off, I chunk that time and do smaller things in it and I do only what I set out to do because it's easy to get sidetracked and wind up doing 10 things halfway instead of 5 things fully.

I don't think to myself, "I have to clean the house today." Rather, if I have 1-2 minutes, I spend it cleaning a toilet and if I have 3-5 minutes, I can clean a shower. I do laundry a few times a week and that makes it easier so in those 20 minutes, I can get a load in, or hang a load, or fold one.

For merging, if I'm on a bus and when I'm at the gym, I read. Whether it's for work, school, or fun. I don't go anywhere without something to read. It's particularly neat when I have to edit a report for work and I can do that while I'm at the gym on a machine--two birds one stone. When I can, I have dinner with friends and that merges two tasks and often on the way to or from meeting them, I'll go produce shopping and often they come with me.

I don't cook so that eliminates a lot of cleaning, shopping, and preparation time. I do prepare cut vegetables/fruits 2-3 times a week and pre-package them into baggies so that it's easier to grab that stuff on the go or for my lunch. That's about all I use my kitchen for.

I don't do a lot of beauty stuff--I wash/wear my hair and put some mascara on and that's about it wrt a beauty routine.

At work, I minimize interruptions by hanging a "don't disturb me" sign. I'll also block out periods on my schedule where people can't schedule meetings with me. I schedule all of my meetings to take place on one day so that I maximize my time/efficiency. I often come here (online to the boards) in between meetings when I don't quite have enough time to dive fully into work project.

Stuff like that. Just merging and chunking and not losinig those little space in between bigger spaces. When you do that enough, you have more Big Time, you know? ...more time that you can devote to more time-consuming projects.

At least that's what works for me, but I have a whole lot of energy. I'm kind of always in motion. (That said, I think ^^^ keeps my energy levels up. When I feel lethargic or groggy in my head is usually when I have a resting/lazo sort of a day.)

[SobaViolence]

are you in school enree?
if so, whatcha studying?

[monkey]

what about hobby time? some hobbies are terribly time consuming but rewarding and fun. what if you want to fit that in?

[monkey]

You're forgetting the 4 hours of screwing around on the internet everyday

so how do you handle it?

[jabumbo]

what about hobby time? some hobbies are terribly time consuming but rewarding and fun. what if you want to fit that in?


underwater basketweaving in the bathtub

[enree erzweglle]

are you in school enree?
if so, whatcha studying?
Not full-time. I work in a university, so I can take classes here or at affiliated colleges for free or close to it. I'm studying whatever I can fit into my schedule given work and home constraints, so it varies a lot.

[Echewta]

Onion rings have helped me manage the time I need to complete my daily tasks.

[ms.peachy]

Time is a weird thing for me right now, with the baby and all. On the one hand, I have no time to do anything major, because I'm in this endless loop of feed the baby, change the baby, play with the baby thta just keeps going - and then every so often she falls asleep and I have a small window in which to have a shower, or tidy around the house, or throw in a load of laundry, or get something together for dinner, or mince around on the net, or whatever I can do in just a few minutes. But I have no BIG stretches of time, only 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, etc.

It's kinda making me a little nuts, actually. Good thing that baby is so damn cute.

[enree erzweglle]

Time is a weird thing for me right now, with the baby and all. On the one hand, I have no time to do anything major, because I'm in this endless loop of feed the baby, change the baby, play with the baby thta just keeps going - and then every so often she falls asleep and I have a small window in which to have a shower, or tidy around the house, or throw in a load of laundry, or get something together for dinner, or mince around on the net, or whatever I can do in just a few minutes. But I have no BIG stretches of time, only 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, etc.

It's kinda making me a little nuts, actually. Good thing that baby is so damn cute.I was talking to my kid the other day--a rarity these days--and that topic came up. Not about you particularly :) but about how much having him changed me in these day-to-day, trivial-seeming ways. Namely, I think before him, I never looked at a clock. I did things when it occurred to me to do them and that was all okay by me. But when he came, he came on the damn day he was due and that was an omen because he led his life in an unbelievably schedule-oriented way--from when he was tiny, just a newborn, everything was predictable by a clock for him and that was weird that a newborn could understand that concept and force it onto me but he did and it caused this quantum shift in my attitude and that stuck. I don't think I could shake it completely now if I tried. I guess n-year habits die hard.

I remember that my days became this: his feeding and his sleeping. Both of which would occasionally get interrupted by fuzzy strings of unrelated events. I absolutely could not get to sleep until he was asleep, which would net part of an hour of me-sleep for every few hours of him-sleep. Which meant that I was a zombie. I don't think I started to enjoy--fully enjoy--being a new mom until he was maybe 5 months old because that's when I started getting hardcore sleep again. That's when my day began to have these discrete sorts of unfuzzy tasks in them again. Just because I started getting consecutive hours of sleep and it was dreamy. The state of my house--forget it. It was disorganized to say the least and largely stayed that way until he was a young teenager.

[monkey]

wow. that's an awesome annecdote (story? both?) similarly, my mom says i was always hurried. i was born early and then i proceeded to do everything in a hurry, she says. ive always worn a watch (since about age 7, i think. i have a permanent watch tan) and i HATE being late, so i always arrive a bit early nearly everywhere. people do have certain traits they're born with. haha.

[Ace42X]

how do people have time to do all the things they want?

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

Simple, I quit my job when I have enough money to survive on and spend a year or so having a great time (in which period, I can tell you I NEVER find enough hours in the day, and NEVER get bored) and then start seeing about getting more work while I still have a decent amount of cash left-over, giving me plenty of time to find more work sedately.

And doesn't that piss off EVERYONE around me? Heh, you bet. You'd not believe how jealous people get when you spend an entire month getting up at 10pm! The down side is that jealousy inspires hatred, and people imply that you not working somehow reflects badly on you as a person. I'm like "feh, are you saying if it wasn't for the need for money, you'd go to work anyway? Suck my dick!"

It is a testament to the sinister power of consumerism that people think about working more and harder before thinking about *simply not consuming as much* and having free time to spend enjoying what they've already got.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

[SobaViolence]

i want kids.


if i could only find a woman who would put up with me long enough to give me a kid or two...

[Lyman Zerga]

dont live so far away then!