I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam. On the surface, the title makes it seem like a book about maximizing efficiency and getting more accomplished. That is one aspect of the book. But I was drawn to Vanderkam’s observations and views about how much our internalized perceptions of time influence whether or not we can enjoy the time that we have. Her recurring mantra throughout the book is that we all have the same amount of time in a given day or week or year. No more, no less than anyone else. Some people are able to enjoy that time and use it to accomplish or experience meaningful things. They feel they have enough time to do the things that matter to them. Others feel stuck in a rushed and exhausting pace and find little time for enjoyment. They feel there is never enough time to do the things they want to do. Her findings show that this difference has a lot more to do with individual perception rather than physical realities or demands.

Prioritize what matters most—first.

Time will always fill. Often with things we don’t love. So start by making time for the things that do matter most. The things that have to get done will get done. The things that don’t have to get done maybe won’t, and perhaps that’s more okay than we feel like it will be. Depending on your job, you could spend hours replying to emails throughout the day. So don’t start with that. Or set a timer and don’t spend indefinite time on your inbox. If there’s a task that requires deep thinking, or a creative endeavor, or time you want to spend reading or mediating, or (you fill in the blank with what’s meaningful to you)… then start with that. The emails will keep. My version of this is that I try to keep myself from doing much housework while my girls are at school. I might do a few dishes as I clean up my breakfast or throw a load of laundry in to give me a movement break from sitting, but I don’t spend time running errands, cleaning the bathroom, balancing the budget, or mending clothes. I’m supposed to be using this time for self-care, reading, writing, journaling (and in the past generating teaching materials or grading). I save other tasks for times when the girls are with me and I can include them. They can help me make the muffins for small group, play outside while I mow the lawn, help me plant or weed in the garden, come along while I run to the store. Yes, all those tasks are a bit easier and go more quickly without them, but those aren’t the tasks that matter most in my life. If I get to the end of the day or week and I haven’t spent time in meditation, reading, and putting words on the page, then I haven’t had time for what matters most to me. My sense of time satisfaction will definitely go down. I’m more likely to feel trapped in the rut of motherhood mundanity. If I get to the end of the week and I didn’t finish the laundry or mow the yard, I might feel some sense of unrest over having uncompleted tasks, but the reality is that the world will go on. And if I felt like I did a lot of good writing work, well, I’ll be less likely to care.

Vanderkam points out that if you do a time log for a week or two, noting how you spend your time for every half-hour block of the week, most people find they have more time than they thought. Most of us manage to get enough sleep one way or another, even when it doesn’t happen when we think it should. We also often waste hours in meaningless things. Some people feel like they don’t have any time to work on a hobby they’ve been wanting to do for years, but in viewing their time log they accumulated twelve hours a week scrolling on their phone. Depending on how you’re wired, evening time my be the least productive. I know that once I get the kids to bed around 8:30, I’m often beat. That is not the time for me to be grading papers or writing or tackling a complicated mental task. I often don’t even want to summon the energy to pay a bill or send another email. I might try to do something intentional with my husband, but more often than not we tend to “reward” ourselves and slip into watching a TV show because it feels easy. I’m not saying this all bad or that I want to cut all television out of my life, but Vanderkam points out that if your evenings are wildly unproductive, you are more likely to be meaningful with your time first thing in the morning. Consider stopping the phone scrolling earlier. Go to bed sooner and get up before the kids. I know if I rose earlier I would choose to either work out, meditate, read, or start writing. I definitely wouldn’t be turning on the television at six in the morning.

Manage Expectations

I wrote a while back about hope vs. expectations, especially related to goal setting. So it will be no surprise that I found this the most compelling quote in the book:

“We all have the same amount of time, so feeling like we have all the time in the world is really about managing expectations. Some suffering, the kind we must learn to be good at, is inevitable. But other suffering is self-imposed. In particular, we suffer when expectations exceed reality. This suffering is a major cause of wasted time. Mental anguish and rumination eat up hours. They also keep us from enjoying the time we have. […] Being able to let go of unrealistic expectations can make us feel more relaxed about time. Here though, is where the magic happens. I really do believe that, paradoxically, low expectations in the short run, if met consistently are what lead to great things in the long run.”

I could say so many things about this, but here is a small, practical example from my life where this quote changed my approach to grocery shopping.

My two and four-year-old daughters go to daycare for four hours each morning. I’m a highly sensitive person (HSP) and that time is crucial for my sense of well-being. It means unstimulated time at home without the clamor of children. To maximize the value of that time without them, I generally have rules about what that time is not used for. Shopping is one of them.

Navigating a grocery store without small children is a luxury. But not more of a luxury than spending time alone in the quiet of my home to read or write or work on tasks that require focus. The result is that I almost always navigate my trip to Aldi for the weekly groceries with two children in tow. Here’s how our routine usually goes:

1. Pick kids up from school.
2. Everyone goes to the bathroom before we leave school (forethought and planning!).
3. Drive to Aldi.
4. Negotiate who sits where in the cart.
5. Deal out snacks.
6. Continue to juggle children, snacks, my grocery list, the store, and squabbles about who sits where and who wants to help put things in the cart.
7. Almost inevitably, somewhere in the middle of the store, my four-year-old has to go poop.
8. The result: I almost always feel angry and frustrated that I have to spend 5-10 minutes navigating my children and groceries up to the front, wait for her to poop and then navigate back to where I was before.

Vanderkam’s book made me re-think this. Why do I get angry? Why is this such a big deal? I guess it’s because I’m probably already over-stimulated. I want to be efficient and get done quickly to get home. I’m thinking about having to check-out, bag my own groceries, unload them and put them away, read books to kids and get them down for rest time, all before getting a moment to myself to calm down and eat my lunch. Anything that puts off that anticipated moment of peace makes me angry. It’s like I take it personally, as if my four-year-old daughter is intentionally trying to make my trip to the grocery store complicated. Like she wants to make my life miserable. But this isn’t true.

The truth is that my daughter is four. Yes, I had her go to the bathroom twenty minutes before and I wish she could’ve pooped then, but that’s not what her body needed at that time. And she’s not sophisticated enough yet to understand or know how to hold it until we get through the store. So she’s just listening to the needs of her body. It has nothing to do with me. Another truth is that five extra minutes in the bathroom is not going to make or break my day. It’s not going to make us late. It’s not going to be a disaster. So it’s not the trip to the bathroom that is the issue; it’s my reaction to it that robs me of my inner calm.

So last week, I thought about Vanderkam’s quote that “feeling like we have all the time in the world is really about managing expectations,” and “we suffer when expectations exceed reality.” So I went into my grocery store trip setting the expectation that I WILL have to stop in the middle and let my daughter go to the bathroom. I WILL be interrupted, because I have small children. Ironically, that was the first trip in months when she didn’t have the urge to poop in the middle of the store. So I suppose I’ll have to fully test my change of heart on a subsequent trip. But I did notice that I was calmer and more focused on being present in the moment with my children in their developmentally appropriate reality than in racing through the store to get it off my to-do list. And I was genuinely prepared to take my daughter to the bathroom. I had mentally blocked off time to include that in the trip.

Be more fully present

Ultimately this book comes down to learning to be more fully present, which is the over-arching theme I find in my spiritual exploration. No matter what I am tasked with doing, can I be more present in the here and now? If I’m mowing the lawn, can I relish the sun, the smell of the grass, be amused by the imaginary play I am glimpsing of my daughters on the porch as I turn the corner? If I’m washing dishes, can I be aware of the water running over my hands, be fully embodied in the space? If I come to the end of the evening and I’m worn out, can I still work to be fully present with my husband—which can still involve acknowledging the weariness. But I can also choose to be present to that weariness instead of running away from it and using technology to numb out.

Can I look for ways to make memories with my girls? If I’m always in a task-driven hurry, I’ll miss sharing the wonder of an earthworm, or playing in the rain, or having my girls snuggled up and attentive over a storybook even though my urge is to say, no I don’t have time to read. They won’t want to snuggle and read forever. Maybe the dishes should wait and we should go on a bike ride instead. It all takes work. It often takes emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual work to stay present. But doing so will increase my enjoyment and overall satisfaction in life. Vanderkam finds that often relationships are tied to time meaningfully spent. Those of us that can get to the end of the day and say we had a meaningful connection with family, friends, or co-workers are more likely to have a better view of how we spent our time. Are there small ways you need to prioritize relationship over a task list?

We can’t get it right all the time. Vanderkam acknowledges this. There will be suffering in life. The goal is not to be happy all the time. There will be seasons that are hard. It will not all be enjoyable. But changing our perspective and looking for small ways to maximize the things in our lives that are good and matter most to us will help in our overall perspective and well-being. Reading her book seems to have reminded me to look for the little things again. Yes, raising small children is exhausting. Yet there are ways for me to prioritize the things that matter most to me. And there are moments of delight hidden in the drudgery. I have to be willing to look for them, cultivate them, and maximize them if I want to find them.

Other Reading:

• Laura Vanderkam’s website: https://lauravanderkam.com/
• My previous writings on things referenced in this post:
  • Expectation Vs. Hope
  • Stop “Shoulding” on Yourself: Why Do We Carry Shame over Morally Neutral Tasks?
  • Negotiating Neurodiversity for Mutual Satisfaction

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