Thinking about My Schedule

An hourly planner (doc)

I fill these out when I'm feeling like too many days are slipping past too much. As I go through the day I jot down what I did during that hour. It helps give me a sense of how the days go.

This is my schedule from last year. It really hasn't changed much for years. This time around, the only real difference is in my approach. I read recently that anything you really want to get done, you should do in the morning, and that made sense to me. So I've been more consciously trying to put the bulk of the things that are really important into the hours between 7 am and 2 pm. Otherwise, they too often slip by.

This means that I try not to spend too many of those hours doing the sort of thing I can fit in no matter what. For example, reading and writing I can fit into any space -- they will always be priorities because my natural tendency runs that way. So I am trying to save those things mostly for the "Lull" hours between 2 pm and 5 pm.

The "Lull" is a new concept for me too. Of course, I always noticed I was pretty much good for nothing between 2 and 5. It's been a constant since my earliest days. During those hours I have a longstanding tendency to retreat into my shell in some form or another. The new thing is that I am trying to recognize this as a pattern and then deal with the situation as it exists. So I'm trying to reserve the quieter activities for those hours -- reading, writing, resting, letting time slip by with the children.

Then there is the second shift. By 5 pm I have to be straightening, prepping dinner, and starting to plan/get ready for the next day. The next few hours are pretty busy -- dinner, supervising Sean's homework, bedtime routine for little ones. Things start slowing down about 10 pm and I can read a bit and hang around with my husband.

So I am newly conscious of those two "Waves" of activity and the little ebb-tide in between.

Here is the summer schedule. The main difference is that we have more formal "schooling" in the morning hours during the fall and winter. And I am getting up quite a bit earlier in order to see Sean off to the school bus.