I have what is known in my family as ‘The Busy Gene’ . For those of us with the Busy Gene, we are compulsively occupied with projects and things to do. Leave us alone for 5 minutes and we’ll come up with 10 crackpot ideas that must be started immediately. And we’ll want everyone else to do them with us.
Insufferable? Possibly. But never, ever boring.
In order to be effective though, I have to be productive in the right ways. With a job that consumes me 50+ hours a week, 2 children, an old house, giant garden, animals, and my marriage, there’s a lot going on. Add to that exercise, friends and family, and all the projects I take on, and being smart with my time is the only thing getting us through. And honestly, that’s not always the case – sometimes I manage my life, sometimes my life manages me. But as much as possible, I try to control the parameters I can, so that I’m ready for the things I don’t control.
What does that mean? Well, first of all, it means planning our time here as well as possible.
This morning I had the day off, and we’re neck-deep in renovating a bedroom for my son, having spent the weekend rearranging the house to a large extent. My job, before I go back to my 9-5 profession tomorrow, is to get as much of painting of trim and edging done today, so that my husband can just use rollers on the walls. We made some good progress on the room yesterday, but there’s a lot more to do today.
I have observed there are three things that make me both productive and effective, and when used in concert, the sheer amount I can accomplish in a day is huge. I mean, after a few days of that I need a nap, but hey, this life thing is a marathon, not a sprint.
First, Know Thyself
Despite the sheer amount of work waiting for me in the room we’re working on, I didn’t start there. I started my morning doing chores and in the kitchen, figuring a little investment of time might make our day and week easier.
See – I know myself, and boy, howdy, am I an extreme morning person. This means I can wake up at 3:30 am and function just fine but by about 8:30 pm you might as well be talking to a soggy towel for all it will get you. Just ask my husband, who is just waking up and ready for prime time at that point.
So by 8:30 am, I had eaten, checked emails at work, scheduled our septic system to be pumped, popped in a load of laundry, made 48 paleo turkey meatballs for tonight’s dinner and for the freezer, roasted some pumpkin seeds and made some tuna salad for lunch. In addition, I had thawed some pulled beef for our lunch tomorrow (I don’t know, it came with out meat share) Oh, and the dishes were done too. Also, I was thawing sausage and rinsing spinach to make some Paleo Egg Muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast.
So when I headed upstairs to start laying painter’s tape on my next section of trim, I had our lunch prepped and made, our dinner mostly prepped and some basic daily chores handled, along with the start of breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. Later on, when my brain is the consistency of a damp sponge, we’ll at least be fed. I have learned if I don’t have a meal planned and food prepped at dinner time we’ll be eating takeout pizza every time. Which brings me to point #2.
Leverage Your Strengths
Why me on the meal plan? Under normal circumstances, with the kids away for the week with their Dad and Eli and i working on projects, I’d have jettisoned the meal plan and left us to scrounge. But a few factors are at play – we have our CSA and meat shares coming this week, so freezer and fridge space will be at a premium. We’re also starting a modified Whole30 until our vacation in August, so if we want to eat healthy and stay on track, we have to think about it.
And I do it because I’m good at it, and it will free my husband up to put all the bedroom furniture together for my son’s room when the painting is done. He doesn’t have to think about food, it’s just there. Which plays to his strengths – I am lucky to be able to assemble basic things, but anything with more than 5 pieces tends to have to be left to the professionals. Not so Eli, who can turn a bunch of sticks of wood into a custom canoe rack seemingly overnight. Assembling things mostly makes me cranky and frustrated, but I can contentedly feed us for weeks on end. For him, planning meals is enjoyable but significant mental load. So we divide and conquer.
Know When to Focus
As I was writing this, between putting some of those meatballs, now cool, in the freezer for a later date I realized it was getting late. My 9:15 target start time for painting had passed, and it was time to bring this blog post, as well as my other chores to a close. It wasn’t that there weren’t more chores – there are always, always more chores in my life, but it was time to ignore them and spend 4 or 5 hours on accomplishing the things that we set out to do for the long weekend. Are there weeds needing to be weeded in the garden? Of course. Tidying to do? Sure. But not if I want to get this thing done, and as a side effect – because my husband really hates trim and edge work in painting, I want to make sure I make as much progress as possible for him.
Besides, the weeds will still be there next weekend.
Little House on the Fairy Hill 