How a single mum working 50+ hours a week manages her time
it's me, I'm the mum
👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hi! If you’re new to these parts, the short version is this: I’ve worked for myself for a long time, writing 15 (!) books, largely done from home. It sent me a bit doolally, being alone that much and also working within an industry that hasn’t always treated me kindly. That’s why I started writing How to Build a Life, now delivered to thousands of readers in over 80 countries. I’d been desperate to unpick why I seemingly had a dream career but life in general felt so underwhelming. I figured out that my brain likes writing but my soul needs something else, so at the start of this year - in addition to still writing my novels - I took a job in a high school mixing teaching and pastoral work. In one million ways this makes no sense at all, apart from the fact that working out of the house with teenagers is making me really very happy. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, and knowing all this means you’re all caught up. WELCOME.
I recently saw a spreadsheet of a woman’s week online - don’t ask me where, I cannot cite my source - and I knew right away I wanted to share something similar for my own time management. It felt super intimate and really quite helpful to see it all laid out as a week-to-view, like oh! I can visualise your whole life now! This feels really instructive for my own! Thanks!! Maybe seeing mine will help you somehow, or maybe it will simply inspire you to jot down your own week-at-a-view. It took me 10 minutes, and feels very satisfying. Like excellent, there’s my life, those are the moments that make up my days, that make up, ultimately, how I feel. I understand, now.
Before I share it, some background:
Like I’ve talked about a couple of times, after reading Four Thousand Weeks I became hyper aware of all the ways I fritter away my time so that for years - and I mean yearrrrsssss - I prioritised being a good little girl with a pristine house and inbox zero over actually living. Like, I’d be so tired by the time I was finished being the best girl there ever was that I didn’t have energy leftover to enjoy anything, much less the bandwidth. In fact, let’s start there: one of my biggest lessons from this whole being alive thing is that BANDWIDTH is my key objective now. It’s easy to have energy when you have BANDWIDTH and you get BANDWIDTH by focussing on three things to give a shit about and dropping every single other ball. Not by accident, either. On purpose.
I’m four months into tracking my time daily, now, just to further draw my attention to how exactly the minutes and hours are being spent, and again, like I’ve said, it’s been illuminating. This is all done in the spirit of understanding where my time goes so that I can figure out how to have more bandwidth for doing absolutely fuck all, the objective being I want more white space in my diary. I am not trying to figure out maximising my time so that I can “achieve” “more” in the conventional sense. That’s important for me to communicate!!! This is all in pursuit of no longer being busy. I want the luxury of time to waste as I see fit.
Top-line thoughts and reflections after time-tracking so far this year include:
it’s really hard to let balls drop… until it isn’t
most tasks are better being time-based rather than result-based i.e. “I will clean the house for one hour and then I will stop” instead of “I will clean until I am exhausted and/or the house looks like it is about to be photographed”
there is time to do anything you want to do, but you can’t do it all
saying “I don’t have time for that” isn’t true. What we mean is “I don’t care about this enough to make room for it.” And that’s okay! I never say “I do not care about this” to anyone out loud, would never hurt their feelings that way, but I have to be willing to admit to myself what I am going to class as a priority
not to get all conspiracy theorist, but honestly capitalism thrives when we’re exhausted because then we spend more money. I’m still unpacking this and how it relates to my own life, but I know it’s a thing!! But first, I am observing it.
Details which might help colour your interpretation of my week-at-a-view: I am 38, a single parent to a primary-school aged kid through adoption (i.e. there is no other parent, and this is the parenting circumstance I chose), I’m able-bodied, have my very-involved parents nearby and an engaged brother 2.5 hours away who loves to Uncle, and as per my bio at the top this year took a job in a school but I still write and do everything associated with that - meetings, emails, events, etc. FOR NOW! As you know, I’m in a big reckoning with that. I do not have any home help, but a guy mows my lawn twice a month in summer. I am not dating, and do not want to be.
My three priorities right now - my important balls I will not drop - are:
my kid, and spending quality time together daily
my morning deep creative work
getting exercise back into my life after four months out of the gym (when starting a new job I figured… babe. Cut yourself some slack. But I wanna get moving again now.)
And so, my week at a view:
