photo credit: asafantman

I am an introvert.

However, people drain the energy right out o’ me.

the kids never go away.

But I Need Solitude.

And when I forget this about myself,

Well, firstly, you redefine solitude.

Once you’ve got a definition that fits into real life, you can find a way to

steal some solitude.

1. Books on CD or loud music in the car.

2. Early morning time.

3. Treadmill + head phones.

4. Outside walks.

5. Long bath at night.

7. Coffee break.

8. Unpopular parks.

9. Quiet time at home.

10. Nap time.

related reading

• How Being Alone Helps Your Brain from BNET. (I knew it! Ha!)
• Some Tips for Introverted Parents Raising Extroverted Kids from Shrinking Violet Promotions :: I love that this blog is all about “marketing for introverts” and you should read The Introvert’s Bill of Rights while you’re there. If you’re introverted, you’ll be nodding (quietly, to yourself) and thinking, “Finally, someone gets it.”  (#9 is my favorite. Also #15. ) If you’re an extrovert, you’ll be that much closer to understanding the strange, enigmatic ways of the introverted people in your life.
• The Lost Art of Studying the Clouds from OPEN Forum.
• Introverts are Powerful People and Leaders from My Super-Charged Life. :: “…introverts gain energy from being alone and reflecting.  This kind of mindful thinking lends itself very well to being a great leader.” (He said it, not me….)

So I am thinking about what I want most in life. It’s an easy list to make.

• as much time as I can get with my husband
• healthy, happy, creative, well-trained children
• organized, comfortable, hospitable home
• creative, fulfilling work/ministry like writing & worship, with growth and progress

Simple. Short list. But lofty goals. These goals require a lot of work. Daily, steady work, discipline, and sometimes intense effort.

All of which would be no problem if I weren’t lazy…

But I am.

Holidays and weekends get me, especially, because I want to sleep late, sit around, have uninterrupted hours to do all the things I don’t have time for… Instead I find that, strangely enough, even on weekends and holidays I am still the wife, mom, and the one in charge of running the house.

(Why didn’t anybody tell me about this “no days off” clause? Where was that in the fine print?)

So I’m still making meals, wiping noses, giving baths, giving instructions, cleaning up messes, enforcing the rules, trying to remember what the rules are, folding the laundry, sweeping the floor… And resenting it because, darn it, no matter how much I try to pretend that I am a naturally industrious, organized, perfect person, I’m not.

I’m a naturally lazy, disorganized, procrastinating, distracted, selfish person. Which means that this ongoing work of wife, mom, homemaker, writer, worshiper is going to require something like a complete transformation.

Ech. That sounds like a lot of work.

“Whatever you do, do it with all your might –Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business.”
-P.T. Barnum

-Alexandra Stoddard

Value Judgments

“Every Yes I say to something out, about, away,” a wise woman once told me, “is a No I have to say to my family.”

She didn’t mean that you shouldn’t ever say Yes to anybody but family.

She didn’t mean that it’s wrong to ever say No to your husband.

She meant that you need to see the true cost of each choice you make. If it’s worth it, great. But if it’s not? Let it go on by. Life is too short to waste.

The Allure of Distraction

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery

We claim to have a special kind of talent at being busy and stressed, but busyness and stress have ever been part of the human condition. One of the greatest joys in life is the infinite range of possibilities. But that’s also one of the causes of great unhappiness: when you try to move in a thousand different directions, you find that you’re not moving at all.

We flit from one thing to another often because it’s simply more work to stick with one thing and do it well. New things are fun. The same old grind gets, well, old.

Learning to Dance

As one half of a marriage, you’re dealing not just with your own distractions and priorities, but with those of your spouse. It’s a delicate little dance you have to do with each other. Sometimes your priorities have to wait. Sometimes his do. Sometimes we let important things die. It’s easy to compare, and resent, and lose sight.

But dancing is supposed to be fun.

Two Things to Remember

Two things trip us up when it comes to our priorities and peace in our lives.

First, we fail to see priorities as seasonal. We must realize that every single priority is not meant for this particular day. There will be weeks, months, maybe years when certain things must be put aside or take a smaller place in life. That doesn’t mean you should give up; you shouldn’t. Hold on to what you love! Just realize that holding on does not mean you must dedicate 8 hours a day to it. Hold on to the idea, the desire; eventually the season will change and it will be the right time.

Second, we fail to see that even our top priorities need to be evaluated. We must judge which ones really are the most important. If we think ten things are equally important, we’re torn ten ways. But if we know which is most important and which is least, we can allocate our time, energy, and selves accordingly. A mom of young children learns this instinctively: It’s nap time. I have 1 hour of peace and quiet. What do I do?

Good, Better, Best

Good is the enemy of the best.

You’ll find no shortage of good opportunities, good possibilities, good activities. Beware.

Good is the enemy of best. Know what is best for you and your family so you can focus in on it. When you focus in on what you and your spouse really care about, you can let go of the distractions. You’ll have more fun, because you’re focusing on what is important to both of you.

5-Minute Marriage Check

What are your top priorities in life? Make a list of ten. Of those, which are most important?

Now, make a list of what you think your husband’s top priorities in life are, the top ten. Hold on to it.

5-Minute Action Point

Ask your husband to make a list of his top ten priorities in life. Then ask him to make a list of what he thinks your top ten priorities are.

Compare your lists. How many of his priorities did you really know? How many of yours did he know?

We can’t assume that we’re all on the same page. Of course you and your husband will have different priorities; you are different people. But knowing what matters to each other gives you common ground. You can make decisions, evaluate possibilities, and set your schedule knowing what is important to both of you.

Go for what is best.

Image courtesy of zabara_tango.

The post is part of the 30-Minute Blogging Challenge at Steady Mom. Start to finish: 26 minutes.

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This post is {day 28} of the Build a Better Marriage Challenge.

It’s a 30-day challenge to be deliberate about building a better marriage. We’ll talk about some of the common obstacles to a better marriage (marriage killers) and some of the important habits for a successful marriage (marriage keys). We’ll also work through some of the misconceptions that affect our marriage, faulty thinking we’ve picked up from our culture, our pasts, and maybe even from the church. Each day’s reading will end with a 5-minute marrige check and a 5-minute action point, so you can take it on home.

Join in via the Mr Linky on the challenge page. You can also just read along, but remember that all challenge participants will receive a free copy of the ebook at the end of the challenge.

Here’s to better, stronger, happier marriages!

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I feel a lot less pressure during the day. I am still running around like crazy, doing stuff, but it seems to be flowing in a more logical order rather than starting a project, remembering I have something else on the list of the day, stopping to do the thing on the list, etc. I am starting and completing things in a more streamlined way. I feel busy but not rushed. I also stopped a couple of times to just play with the kids or take care of them and wasn’t trying to multitask as I usually am. I struggle with giving myself time to just be a Mommy when I have an uncompleted list over my head.

Start Building: A Master Task List is simply a place to put all those things you need to do. Anything from “Remodel the kitchen” to “Write thank you note to Aunt Nina” goes on the list. You can periodically check it over and cross off the things you’ve completed, or that have become irrelevant. You can also set a certain day each week, or a certain amount of time each day, to do as much as you can off the list. Alternately, pick one item from the list to accomplish each week, and work on it whenever you have time. It’s best, when you want to tackle the major projects on the list, to break them down into smaller task. So, “Remodel the kitchen” would become “Clean out cabinets,” “Paint kitchen,” “Shop for new refrigerator,” etc.

BASIC SCHEDULING
I like to keep my schedule pretty basic. It includes 1) A Beginning and an End and 2) Time Blocks. There are multiple planning calendars in as many formats as you can dream up. I find them all too complicated for my simple living preferences. This is not true for everyone; my husband loves his Franklin Covey planner and uses it faithfully. I feel restricted by all those boxes with lines and titles. The perfectionist in me just can’t leave well enough alone, so I spend more time scheduling in all the pretty boxes than I do actually implementing my schedule. Since the point of a schedule is to simplify and to increase productivity, and I find that the more complex planners accomplish neither goal for me, I stick with my basics and forgo the professional leather-binder look. You might find that a combination of methods works best for you. My advice is this: start simple and be diligent with your simple scheduling techniques. Once you know they work for you, you can tweak and add on and adjust to your heart’s delight. Don’t start way at the top of the complex calendar hierarchy. The very complexity is too overwhelming to keep up when you’re first learning how to schedule, and you’ll get discouraged and drop it all.

A BEGINNING AND AN END
This topic makes me think of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, when she first attempts to teach the Captain’s children how to sing: “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…” Of course, she drops her little Happy Beginnings song in favor of the inexplicably popular Do-Re-Mi. We, however, shall carry our Happy Beginnings all the way to Happy Endings.

What needs a beginning and an end is your working day. Your entire day is capped on both ends automatically by your bed. You wake up and get out of bed, your day begins. You get sleepy and get back in bed, your day ends. I see no reason to mess with that kind of perfection, unless you need some help on the waking up and getting out of bed part. We’ll get to that in another article. For now, we’re dealing with the workday itself, the part of the day that begins after you’ve been awakened by the sound of bluebirds (or the alarm clock) and, I hope, have eaten a halfway decent breakfast. Oh, also, you should get dressed. Maybe even before breakfast.
Your workday beginning may be set in stone already. You have to be at the office at 9:00 am. There you go. 9:00 am it is. For those of us who work in more flexible fields, in which the office hours dictate next to nothing, setting a Beginning is a matter of choice and convenience. If you’re a stay-at-home Mom trying to wake, dress, and feed three kids, then give yourself enough time to do that before you try to get down to the rest of your work. If you’re a work-from-home small business owner who likes to start the day with a two-hour gym session, then set your workday beginning accordingly.

The End of the workday is just as important as the beginning. Again, this may be dictated by office hours, or it may be a matter of choice and fitting in with what happens in the rest of your day. Perhaps it’s 3:00 pm when the kids get home from school. Perhaps it’s 6:00 pm when your spouse gets home from work. Perhaps it’s 9:00 pm when you realize you haven’t eaten anything since noon. (I don’t recommend that last time option, by the way.) Choose an End. Put a cap on your working hours. Sure, you can always choose to do “extra” work or finish up projects in the evening if you want to, but that should be something you do because you really want to, not because you have to, and it should never interfere with your family time or social obligations.

My workday beginning is 8:00 am and my workday end is 5:00 pm. Of course there is more that happens before and after those times, but it is within those times that I block out time for work and have specific goals to accomplish.

BLOCKING OUT YOUR TIME
I learned this one from my husband, who implements the concept with his Franklin Covey planner in a way I can only admire. The idea itself is rather simple and works beautifully for helping to keep me on track without overwhelming me with details.
Establish the basic key areas of your work.
Note how much time you would like to spend per week on each area.
Note your recurring obligations: errands, events, meetings, social responsibilities, etc.
Plug in time blocks for those key areas.
Don’t worry about the details!

THE KEY AREAS
Since I am a stay-at-home Mom and a work-from-home writer, my key areas are Household and Writing. Keep your key areas as general and broad as you can. There is always opportunity to hash out the details later. Try to have no more than four key areas. You want to be able to remember them and you want to be able to block time for them all. If you have too many, you’ll defeat yourself before you even get started.

NOTE YOUR PREFERRED TIME
I would like to put in 15 – 20 hours per week in Writing and I know I need to put in at least 10 – 15 hours per week in Household if I am going to keep things running smoothly. Remember, the more key areas you have the less time you can put into each one.

NOTE YOUR RECURRING OBLIGATIONS
Note all the meetings, social events, church and school events, regular errands, or other obligations that take place within your workday. Do they occur at the same time every week? Do they vary from week to week? Approximately how much time per week is required for these obligations? If your workday lasts for 7 hours, 5 days a week, and your recurring obligations take up about 2 hours per day, 5 days a week, then you need to subtract 10 hours from your 35 working hours to get your actual working total: 25 hours.

PLUG IN TIME BLOCKS
If you have 4 key areas and you would like to spend 6 hours per week on each one, you’ve got a total of 24 hours available. With your total of 25 working hours, you’re within your boundaries but haven’t left yourself much room for padding. It’s a good start and you can tweak it as you go. Now it’s your choice as to where you place those time blocks. You can spend six hours in a row on one of your key areas, then switch to another the next day. Or you can divide it up: 2 hours for Area 1, then 2 hours for Area 2, etc. It’s much, much better if these blocks can be a standard, repeated schedule. Repetition will result in unconscious mental training and you’ll be much more productive during your working time.

DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE DETAILS!
Don’t waste your time on 10-minute blocks for every little event that makes a demand on your time. You want to get a big picture that is simple enough to carry with you even if you’re not carrying a planner or calendar.

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND SCHEDULING INSTRUCTIONS
Here’s what my daily schedule looks like. It’s pretty simple, and even though I still write it down almost every day just to keep myself on track, I can remember it without my notebook.

• 8-10 HOUSEHOLD
• 10-12 WRITING
• 12 Lunch, etc.
• 1-3 HOUSEHOLD
• 3-5 WRITING/Rest

While I can set aside my writing, the household obligations don’t automatically shut off at 5pm. That’d be nice, but I have never gotten it to work that way. There’s that pesky problem of supper and needing to bathe children and little things like that. So I do what needs to be done for my household work after the official workday ends, but I keep it to a minimum. The bulk of my cooking and cleaning I try to get done in those scheduled hours.

FLEXIBILITY
That’s my standard schedule, but it isn’t etched in stone or even written in Sharpie. I’m often behind or ahead by half an hour or so. If I have a big household project I want to complete, I’ll commit a couple of writing blocks to it. No guilt. It’s my schedule, after all, and the point of it is to keep my life simple and productive and to help me accomplish my goals. A schedule is a fluid thing and will change with every season of your life. That’s okay. Work with it. Tweak it. Be open to change. But have that basic structure in place so you don’t end up just floating around aimlessly, wondering at 6pm where the last 8 hours went and why you didn’t get anything done. Having a schedule gives you a plan, a starting point, an agenda so you can say NO to the unnecessary because you have already committed to the necessary. It also gives you freedom and flexibility so you can allocate time the way you want to without feeling guilty about it.

COMMON SCHEDULING PROBLEMS
Cramming: You are a mere human, after all. Eating, sleeping, and bathroom breaks are a necessary part of life. You can’t schedule them out. And you are surrounded by a lot of other mere humans, who may call you on the phone or stop by your desk or need help with an important presentation or with tying their shoes. Don’t cram so much into your schedule that losing ten minutes of it sets you hopelessly behind. Keep your time blocks big. It’s okay if you give a few minutes away here and there. Give yourself some padding.
Detailing: Detailing your car, good idea. Detailing your schedule, not so much. If you came up with 15 key areas that you’re trying to block time for, you have complicated your life far more than any human should. This practice keeps you from seeing a big picture. Details will only allow you to see chopped-up tidbits and you will never feel like you’re making any big progress. Compare. Does it sound better to say, “I just spend 15 minutes on cleaning and then 10 minutes on decorating and then 15 minutes on meal preparation and then 10 minutes on cleaning out the refrigerator and then 5 minutes on checking email and then 20 minutes on laundry and then 10 minutes on sorting the mail…” or to say, “I just spend two hours managing the household.” Don’t feel that you have to have a 100-item list of things you’ve done at the end of the day. A short list of a few good, solid, big ones is far more satisfying.
Varying: If you have to spend 15 minutes every morning planning out how to block your time, you’re making it too complicated. Obviously there are things you can’t control and can’t plan for ahead of time. But to the extent that your life and obligations have repeating, weekly patterns, you can block time in a repeating pattern. If you’ve kept your key areas broad enough, you can focus on a variety of different items within each time block to keep yourself from feeling bored.
Forgetting: I say forgetting, but the real problem is Failing to Implement. Once you’ve made your schedule, use it! If you’re not sure you’ll like it, try it for a week or a month. You can adjust all the parts that don’t work for you. Just commit to it. Be diligent. Make it a foundational part of your life, and you’ll streamline about 30 decisions that you currently have to make every day into one easily remembered plan of action.

Go get ‘em, Tiger.

I will need to continue working on this habit, however, to make it solid. I allowed enough interruptions and “snoozes” to keep it from becoming an unquestioned part of my daily routine. I am convinced that it is worth it. I really enjoyed the time I had in the morning and felt better prepared to deal with the day. I started out feeling ahead of things rather than running behind.

The sleepiness was a problem, probably the most difficult part of the challenge for me to overcome. I could make myself get out of bed physically but staying awake and alert enough to think, read, or write sometimes seemed impossible. I think the best fix for that is getting enough sleep on a regular basis; for me, that doesn’t mean eight hours every night but it does mean being aware of when I am tired and going to bed accordingly.

Build It: 5am may be too early for you (or too late!) but the essence of the idea isn’t the exact time but that you have a specific time and stick to it, day in and day out, until it is a habit. Once the habit is established, you have a little elbow room for sick days and off days; frankly, though, I would rather get up at my 5am alarm, have that peaceful, calm time, and then get a nap later in the day if I am that tired. Not everybody can work naps in, I understand.

So set a time that works for you and stick to it, consistently, for at least 21 days. Plan your morning time so you aren’t left staring blankly at the coffee maker, wondering why you aren’t in bed anymore. If that happens, the pull of the pillow will work on you and you will end up buried under covers, zombie-fied, rolling out of bed at the last minute, running around, back to the old frustrations.

Try it. It’s worth it.