Life Hacks for 2016 | A Month of Faves 2016
Day 6: Wed. | Dec. 14 – Best Changes We Made This Year #AMonthofFaves2016 – to your Day / Life / Routines / Blog / Habits
Yeah, yeah, I’m behind. I got sick last week and then got busy so I need to play catch up!
Forest has been in the family for over two years now and I still feel like I’m trying to adjust my life and routine. It seems every few months there’s a slight change with his development which alters our ability to do something, usually for the better, and then there’s another shift. It’s always subtle, like my ability to cook and bake more because he needs a little less supervision and isn’t constantly needing me to hover over him. That said, I still haven’t found my rhythm to make time for everything I would like to do.
If there’s one thing I see consistently from many people (namely women) post-kid is that sometimes we can be more productive than before we had children. Sure, I’ve lost several hours in my day for things that I previously would have been able to do things but somehow I manage to squish in things that I want to do—most days at least. There has been a lot of prioritizing and me realizing I enjoy doing a lot of different things but needing to focus on one thing at a time—or maybe two things—is about all I can do. Parsing them out throughout the days is also something I’ve had to develop. Maybe I read during Forest’s bedtime and I write a bunch of blogs up on weekends. Or I spend a few hours once or twice a week in the evenings processing photos so I can wrote those blogs out on the weekends. Lunchtime is where I’ve had to co-opt a lot of my time, where I’ve spent time doing a lot of my gardening or working out, depending on the season. For more than half of this year it has been the gardening hour. Once I quit the gym at lunch and dedicated my ‘hour’—read: about 40 minutes, subtracting out time to drive to and from work plus time to shower if needed—I realized that’s what I needed to do to get anything done. I wish I had the luxury to lounge on all of those lunch hours but I don’t. Sometimes they are used for errands and rarely are they used to dilly dally—maybe more so in winter than anything. Even then, I can figure out something else I need to do, chores or creatively, during that hour.
I wish I could become a morning person, someone who can just jump up and get going with the day. While I have become accustomed to waking up earlier than I used to and enjoy these morning hours more, I still need time to wake up, drink coffee and move slowly. It’s why my goals for morning workouts continue to stall. I know morning workouts would solve a lot of time issues but it is a difficult challenge to overcome. Maybe this will go on my list of things to be better about this coming year, managing morning hours during the work week more efficiently.
While I guess I have made strides on many fronts in day to day life I don’t think I’m at the level that I need to be for things to click just a little better. This post is a bit of a brainstorm, I suppose, on what I need to work on for next year. I’ve realized over the years that a lot of my hobbies and interests are seasonal and I should play into that more. I also rely on how I feel to motivate me versus pushing through much of the time. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
I think I’ll refrain from going on further but I can see myself turning this into a post about next year and that’s coming soon. How about you, what positive life hacks or changes have you made this year?
One Comment
Patrice
Interesting that you say you are more productive than you were before kids! I can’t attest, but I always find when I have less free time, I AM more productive. So there’s something too it–maybe the type A personality feeling pressured to get things done.