My New Routine: A Pilot
In my corporate life, many of my projects started off with "pilots". You need to pilot something before you decide it's worth implementing, because you don't want thousands of unhappy clients. I only have a couple clients now (four, if you count the dog and cat), and luckily they're pretty forgiving. :) Regardless, I feel the need to pilot, so voila!
Annabel took it easy on me and napped for a looong time this afternoon. Which gave me more than enough time to do some "research" for inspiration and then to mock up a draft.
The Inspiration
A month ago I discovered MoneySavingMom.com, self described as "an upbeat and encouraging blog dedicated to helping you find great deals, stretch your hard-earned dollars, and live on less than you make so you can save more and give more. " I completely agree with the description; the mom who runs it, Crystal, does a great job of keeping it interesting, updated, easy to read, and full of useful information.While searching around her site, I found posts about creating routines and time management, and really liked the simple approach to creating something daunting. Today, I finally read through them all from start to finish, including:
In a nutshell, Crystal provides "assignments" per Part that help you end up with a routine, not a schedule. And she emphasizes something that I really appreciate: the routine "is not a regimented schedule with detailed time blocks for how you’re supposed to spend every minute of every day."
To which I say, phew!!! Because I now know that life with a toddler does not allow a regimented anything. Not at all.
The only thing I decided not to pursue (at least for now) is the concept of having "envelopes of time". Like the financial envelope system, you decide how much time you want to dedicate to something and set aside that total time in a figurative envelope. Then you take time out of that envelope as you use it. It's a way to force you to use your time more wisely.
For example: By choosing to work on my blog for an hour, I now have an hour less to work on Annabel's newborn scrapbook. Guess that gets pushed out yet another day, d'oh.
Anyway, I decided that I better get my pilot completed (and marked successful!) before getting more granular with my time.
The Draft
Using Crystal's guidance, I ended up with this:Morning routine
6:00 Wake up time – Em
Shower, get dressed
Coffee
Start a load of laundry
Make Zach's lunch
7:15 Wake up time – Annabel
8:00 Breakfast
Switch laundry to dryer
Fun time!
Afternoon routine
11:00 Lunch – Annabel
Fold laundry
11:30 Nap - Annabel
12:00 Lunch – Em
Clean up kitchen
Straighten bathrooms & bedrooms
Cleaning task
2:00 Wake up – Annabel
Fun time!
Evening routine
5:30 Dinner
Clean up kitchen
7:30 Bed time – Annabel
10-minute house pickup
Read
10:00 Bed time – Em
Time to Pilot!
I feel pretty good about this, and I plan to start it tomorrow. Normally I let myself sleep in on the weekends, but there's no better time to start than now, right?!?Since the glorious Annabel nap kept going strong, I also decided to work on lists of cleaning tasks (note the "Cleaning task" in the Afternoon routine)... but I'll save that for tomorrow's post. Ohhh, the anticipation!! :D
No comments:
Post a Comment