What do you miss about pre-quarantine life and what don’t you miss?
That was the question I asked in my last blog. The response I received about what people miss was pretty consistent.
I miss people and hugs. I miss working with clients and students. I miss seeing friends.
What was not missed was also consistent.
I don’t miss scrambling to juggle kids’ activities and making meals. I don’t miss a full schedule. I don’t miss going to meetings all the time.
In other words, they didn’t miss being too busy.
Let’s talk about a dresser that’s too full.
I promise, it will make sense in a minute.
When a dresser drawer is over-full, it’s hard to find what you want to wear. You may avoid putting laundry away in that over-full drawer and so it sits in a laundry basket in front of the dresser and that makes the situation even worse.
The solution for the over-full drawer problem is to dump out the contents and see what no longer fits, what has holes in it, what doesn’t feel good to wear, what you have too many duplicates of and only put back what you do wear.
While this makes sense logically, when you consider taking the time to do that sort and purge process, if feels like it will just take too long.
Your instinct says, “I don’t have time for that now.”
So, you tolerate living out of the laundry basket and the chaotic vibe that it creates in your bedroom.
How about that too-full schedule?
Let’s get back to being over-busy.
Quarantine has forced a schedule interruption. We already knew we were busy, but did we know what less busy felt like?
There’s a spaciousness now. I have Saturdays and Sundays available for home projects. There’s more time for hanging out with the kids or leisurely making dinner together.
Before, I’d have to miraculously figure out how to both drive carpool for sports practice (or attend a sporting event) and make a nutritious dinner.
At this time of year, I’d be getting a brain cramp from comparing multiple activities calendars to see when this summer camp started and ended and whether that conflicts with a trip to see family, college orientation, vacation, summer school, work, who needs the car for their job, and how to get everyone where they need to be.
Do you also feel like you deserve a medal for your mental scheduling gymnastics?
Like the women who responded to my question about what they don’t miss, this situation has given me perspective on what I expect myself to do for my busy family.
I’m not sure those old expectations are reasonable.
Too-full is only the symptom.
The overly-full drawer and the impossibly full schedule are merely signaling the problem. The solution is to lay it all before you, take stock, and make decisions.
Remember how I said we avoid tackling the too-full dresser drawer because it feels like it will take too much time?
It feels overwhelming not because of the quantity of things, but because of the decision factor.
When it comes to stuff decisions, we have two main paths: keep or discard (toss, recycle, donate).
When it comes to time decisions, we have three main paths: do it, delegate it, or delete it.
Where we get stuck on are the maybes. You can lessen that grouping by having clear perimeters for deciding.
Do a time-value inventory
Let’s create a process and some perimeters for evaluating your activities.
- First, list the activities you did on a regular basis, as well as those of each member of your busy family. Create columns for each person.
- Next to each activity, rank the ones you love with a #1, rank the ones that you don’t love with a #3. Label the in-between ones as #2.
- Take a closer look at the activities you marked as #1’s. If you were only doing these (or helping your children do these) would your schedule be overly-full, just right, or have space in it?
- Now add in those tasks that support daily living, making meals, keeping house, working. How does that impact your schedule of #1’s?
- Examine the #3’s. Do you feel better about letting these go?
- How about the #2’s? Are there any you would place as #1’s, or can you move them to the #3 category?
- Think about where the pressure to do the #2’s is coming from. It might seem as though you have to be part of a certain thing or that your child has to do multiple activities at a time, but is that true? What would it be like to be more selective?
- If an activity is important, but you are at capacity to support it, can you delegate something so you can still have a spacious (or at least not overly-full) schedule?
- What are your new time-value rules?
- How will you remember to keep them?
Decide to leave busy behind.
Even when it feels like you don’t have a choice, you do.
Reach out if you want support completing your time-value inventory: email Kate@KateVarness.com.
It’s time to wake up to ways you can be intentional about your life and allow yourself to feel good.
May your schedule feel spacious,
Kate
