Image by Jackie Samuels from Pixabay
When the pandemic lockdown first started, I worked from home. Since I teach, that meant that I was creating video lessons for students to watch when it was convenient for them and occasionally scheduling live conference times for those with questions. After a week or so of acclimating to the new routine, I began to realize that I finished my daily teaching responsibilities in less than four hours each day. Suddenly my life became calm. Almost still.
My canines loved the new schedule. We walked for at least an hour every morning; they rode shotgun on all my errands; family naps could happen at any time. Since we were all fortunate enough to stay healthy, we counted our blessings and adapted to our considerably simpler lives.
That’s when I started this blog and joined a weight loss program. I started meditating. From the outside, it probably looked like I wasn’t accomplishing much. I knew, however, that nothing could have been further from the truth. I was thinking, imagining, dreaming. In short, I was living. Work lasted just long enough to give me some structure. And once those first few hours were over, I was free for the rest of the day. It was incredible. And counterintuitive: life becoming still meant I got more done. More of what I wanted to do.
Being lucky enough to remain healthy during the lockdown meant I could accept this extra time to myself as the true gift that it was. Once I started back to school, however, I became painfully aware of something that hadn’t bothered me much before the lockdown: my job and its responsibilities really get in the way of living the way I want.
Yeah, I know, waa waa. I’m lucky to have a job and I’m certainly grateful for it. But the realization that I can’t pursue certain interests (like writing more or researching projects I care about) because I have to work is really starting to get under my skin. How can people aspire to greatness when the minutiae of every day job routines (many of which are truly unnecessary) drag them down like a pair of cement shoes? After a day of trying to teach a number of obscure objectives to kids who mostly don’t care about them, my energy, motivation, and hope have disappeared. I just want to sleep or sit outside on the deck or play with my dogs. Forever.
There are strategies to minimize work overload, of course. My go-to one is to leave work at work. Make sure I waste no time on the clock. Create a to-do list, kick its ass, and go home. That had been working well for me since school started in August but it has begun to unravel now that December is winding down. Even with nearly every day neatly tied up at school I still arrive home with more fatigue than I can manage lately. What gives?
Part of it is that I’ve let a few of my good habits slide. I’m still drinking a lot of water and walking or running twice a day. I’m losing weight (on purpose). But my commitment to meditation has waned. I’m not spending any time on visualization. And yeah, I’m writing now but I haven’t written at all in over two weeks.
Why have I ignored those practices? The short answer is fatigue. What else?The laundry piles up. The dogs want to walk and play. Bills are lurking in my inbox. There are things from last week still cluttering today’s to-do list. Just getting to bed at a reasonable hour is a huge victory on most days.
So it occurred to me that this kind of living isn’t good enough and I need to fix it. Seriously, is it too much to ask that I actually enjoy most of my waking hours? Or is it so wrong to want my actions to align with what I believe in? And by the way, what do I believe in? I’ve stopped caring if my aspirations are suitably productive by society’s standards or interesting or exciting enough to attract the approval of others. I just want to live.
So what now? No matter what we value or how focused we are, there will always be those chores we have to do that we don’t want to do. The research I’ve seen suggests that farming out some of our more mundane chores can be an effective way to create more time in one’s day. For example, I no longer grocery shop in stores. I complete my orders online and use the pickup services that my favorite stores offer.
Not only does that keep me from having to search for things or wait in line, but it also means I don’t have to spend any time freshening up and putting on something decent so I can appear in public. That was why I hated it so much anyway. Necessary yard work yielded to my having to make a trip to the grocery store. I had to rush to get there before it closed. Then the outdoor chores would remain incomplete and the trip to the store would be a pure hassle. It was a pain.
I’ve thought about hiring out my laundry and yard work in addition to my grocery shopping, but doing so would actually cost money (grocery pickup is free.) Plus, there’s the gross-out factor of someone handling my under garments or simply just seeing them. Instead of hiring someone to do those jobs, I’ve decided to try scheduling them instead.
On the surface, scheduling doesn’t appear much different from a to-do list. And too often I simply ignore or dread such lists anyway. The power of scheduling, however, means I not only commit to doing the chore but I also commit to a time and day to get it done. Then, if I do it earlier than scheduled, I feel even better. Doing something way earlier than necessary doesn’t feel as bad to me. Packing my lunch for the next day is not a pain if I do it as soon as I get home each day. Scooping the cat’s box is not (as) hideous if I do it way before going to bed. Running errands is less annoying if I can accomplish it (quickly) on the way to or from work.
Scheduling works the other way around as well. Certain days, like Mondays, are overwhelming and unwelcome by definition. Therefore, I am scheduling no distasteful chores on that first day of the work week. Getting ready for the next day and taking care of pets is all I will commit to on Mondays. Besides, I have a standing dinner appointment with my mom-in-law on that day, so I don’t want anything to interfere with that.
Tuesday is a long day for me at school. I don’t have a planning period on that day so I’m literally in front of my students all day except for a thirty minute lunch break. Then I stay after for an hour in our math tutoring lab. So I now ameliorate all that by scheduling tests or self-directed work on those days. But I also need a good plan for after hours. I’m so relieved to get home that all I want to do is play with the dogs and take a long walk or run. So guess what? I’m going to simply do just that. Tuesday afternoons are dog days only (after I quickly pack my lunch and scoop the cat box, of course).
Perhaps the schedule method will help you get on top of your most dreaded chores thereby freeing time for pursuit of your true goals. Certainly just getting stuff done is not the point of the schedule. It’s getting stuff done so you can do what you really want: be that resting, writing, investing time in a side hustle or whatever.
The final arrow in your quiver should be to write down that schedule or at least pencil your chores into a calendar. The old fashioned kind that hangs on a wall or is magnetized to your fridge. Make sure you see that thing every day. Make it something you can touch and handle. Then you can also enjoy scrawling a big X across your dreaded activities. And enjoy the magic of time expanding before your eyes as all your dreams come true.