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purplerabbits at 10:13am on 19/06/2006
purplerabbits at 10:13am on 19/06/2006This week is a time for self questioning, so my questions for myself are this: how much stuff do other people do? how do they know how much stuff to do? and how do they manage it?
Let me break that down. Some people I see on LJ do a heck of a lot. They have kids, study, do a demanding job which they often have to commute to, maintain more than one relationship, go to meetings of various kinds and still find time to watch new movies, read and discourse knowledgeably on a variety of topics. At the other end of the scale I see myself. It takes me five minutes to get to work and yet I am often late, I barely do any housework, am often too lazy to cook properly and many evenings are spent on my own, in my flat, doing nothing I can particularly remember afterwards.
Actually I am not at the other end of the scale. At the other end of the scale is someone I love dearly who has no job and is happy to spend all day in an armchair watching geek shows on TV - something that would drive me mad in short order. But.
How do other people manage to fit stuff in their lives? What suffers? And why am I convinced that I'm too tired so much of the time? Is it that I'm sleeping too much, eating wrong and getting little or no exercise? Well, yes, that probably does have something to do with it. But what does a 'typical' busy day look like for busy people? Where do you save time? How much sleep do you get? How much housework gets done and who does it?
OK, this has turned from self questing to quizzing you lot, but I am still interested. I would like to be doing more in life, or at least feeling more purposeful, and I am genuinely unsure how, so any and all opinions are welcome...
Let me break that down. Some people I see on LJ do a heck of a lot. They have kids, study, do a demanding job which they often have to commute to, maintain more than one relationship, go to meetings of various kinds and still find time to watch new movies, read and discourse knowledgeably on a variety of topics. At the other end of the scale I see myself. It takes me five minutes to get to work and yet I am often late, I barely do any housework, am often too lazy to cook properly and many evenings are spent on my own, in my flat, doing nothing I can particularly remember afterwards.
Actually I am not at the other end of the scale. At the other end of the scale is someone I love dearly who has no job and is happy to spend all day in an armchair watching geek shows on TV - something that would drive me mad in short order. But.
How do other people manage to fit stuff in their lives? What suffers? And why am I convinced that I'm too tired so much of the time? Is it that I'm sleeping too much, eating wrong and getting little or no exercise? Well, yes, that probably does have something to do with it. But what does a 'typical' busy day look like for busy people? Where do you save time? How much sleep do you get? How much housework gets done and who does it?
OK, this has turned from self questing to quizzing you lot, but I am still interested. I would like to be doing more in life, or at least feeling more purposeful, and I am genuinely unsure how, so any and all opinions are welcome...
curious
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I don't organise stuff so much as surf the catastrophe curve from crisis to crisis and (mostly) get stuff done when it needs to be done by luck rather than planning.
What I find helpful when I'm feeling lethargic is to set myself one small goal and try to achieve that. It seems better than contemplating the whole mountain of undone jobs and feeling useless for having achieved none of them at all because I can't think where to start.
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That's my best guess, anyway. Also, I eat a lot better than I used to and possibly get very slightly more exercise than I used to (though still v sedentary). That's probably helped.
And I can get by on less sleep. Probably also a motherhood thing.
This is starting to sound like a tract called 'Give Birth And Your Life Will Improve', which was not really what I intended - just, I had no self discipline before, and I have more now because there was no choice in the matter!
Oh, and we have a cleaner. That's freed up time and stopped a lot of rows - most of the rows S and I have ever had have been about housework, since I never remember to do any.
Typical day: if I'm doing childcare, I get up at 6.30-7 (these days), get breakfast for me and Holly and divide the day between playing with her, taking her out, maybe shopping, and spending as much time on the computer as I can get away with, either working or browsing. I get relieved at about 6.30-7pm, help put Holly to bed, usually get cooked for, and then have a couple of hours to watch TV, catch up with the husbands or spend more time on the computer.
Days I don't have Holly are currently spent either at work, writing at home, or doing admin/housework things. I do of course only have a few days a month of paid work, which helps - couldn't do a full-time job at the moment.
I'm very sociable these days and too much time in the house makes me depressed, so I go out a lot at weekends. There's always stuff to do in London, even on not much money.
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I found myself only doing housework when I knew someone was coming over - which does mean that if I get no visitors then my place looks like a bombs hit it. Usually I then refuse to put the tv on and clean up about once a week, normally whle my washing is going through the machine.
I've started to do more in the flat, mainly because it helps with the lethargic & lonely feelings I've been getting on a more regular basis over the past few months. The only problem I find with this is that if I start something late into the evening then it keeps me awake - eg, last night I was determined to finish the top I started making, so I stopped the sewing at 9pm, watched Lost and then carried on with the final sleeve - unfortunately this then meant that I "woke up" at about 11pm and couldn't sleep till gone 1am.
I'm eating more fruit at work, due to there being a huge tescos opposite the office, and I'm drinking more water during the day. Basically I've cut out almost all caffiene and stopped the Diet coke almost completely, even when I go to the pub. It helps a lot, stops the headaches I used to get and helps me get to sleep.
I go to Tai Chi once a week and started to do it at home too, I find it helps.
Sleep - get between 6-8 hrs during the week per night, and 8+ hours at the weekend. Though now it's sunny it does stop me sleeping in as much as I used to.
I think that sitting and not doing much does make you tired, but it's a different & lower quality of tired than if you were going out and doing stuff, or even being active inside your own house, I'm always suprised how well I sleep after being very active beforehand.
Just my 2pworth
L
x
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L's suggestion of Tai Chi is good. I've recently started Chi Gung (similar background to Tai Chi, but they move even slower) and just getting out and going to a class is doing me a load of good. I think it's because there's a set time and I've paid up-front for a term that forces me to do it, even when I'm feeling marginal.
In terms of missing out, I'm now starting to worry that I'll be giving up mountain biking. I haven't been for months and months and with the imminent baby, I'm worried that I'll just never get back into it. I'm also working so much around the house that I'm not looking for a better job, nor studying, nor promoting my business.
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Me, I combatted gnomes in force with large quantities of fantasy novels today. If that helps :)
Typical level of activity?
Re: Typical level of activity?
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I'm not sure laziness exists - just people have reasons to do less or more. It is not a moral or "character" issue.
The more you do, it tends to be the more you can do.
Finding it difficult to do stuff like housework, tidy up, water plants etc is a classic sign of depression.
"If you want something done, find a busy person."
I do stuff not because I am unlazy but because I have a low boredom threshold.
Consistently being late for stuff probably means you don't want to do it.
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This is true but since what I want is to never have to get up for work any time before 9am ever, it could be tricky to get :-)
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Doesn't help when work makes you feel tired. I'm less enamoured of working in front of a screen all day too these days, and pondering things that don't involve that. But not in any major way yet.
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If I'm travelling, I expect my working week to be at least 50hrs, plus 1.5hr commutes on the days I'm in Scotland. On the plus side, I get a lot of reading done. If I'm not travelling, I usually do a 40-45hr week, again plus the 1.5hrs of commuting.
This leaves less time and energy than I'd like.
Getting up varies between 04:45 (serious travel days) and 08:30 (when I can't be arsed and stagger into work late). Most days I'm up at about 07:30. I generally get home between 18:00-19:00 and do very basic housework before
After dinner varies: I can slob around watching TV, but sometimes read or more recently, get the laptop out to do more work :/
I also do yoga once a week, try to go running on a couple of lunchtimes and do something else exercise related as well (walking, cycling or extra yoga). I'm reasonably good at sticking to this now, but when there's a lot of travel or I'm putting in ridiculous hours this is the second thing to go, with 'healthy diet' a close third. The first was my music sadly, as it's bloody difficult to organise music lessons and find the time to practice with my current schedule and a building-site for a house. I hope this changes soon.
At the weekend there's usually shopping (food, errands, DIY, parents or some combination of all three. There should really be more DIY, as this is going tremendously slowly. There's usually something time-consuming to sort out: this weekend it was the car, the weekend before we had a house-guest, before that a trip and so on...
I get about 6-7hrs of sleep a night on average, which is acceptable, but only just.
I also try to get out and go to the pub or do something sociable at least once a week, even if it's just
The house is a not the way I'd like it to be. The kitchen and bathroom are always looked after, but beyond that it can easily become chaos and I can't wait until the renovations are complete. I hope things will be different, but the way our working hours are ramping up and the amount of travel we both do means I'm not confident in this regard.
My relationships with friends certainly suffer, as I tend not to put in the maintenance work I should. I know lots of people, most of whom I see very rarely, so I don't know many people well aside from a few long-time friends who are also very busy.
Reading what I've written, I'm really quite a busy person and yet I often think I'm lazy. Given a chance, I'll open a bottle of wine, plonk myself on the sofa and switch off, which doesn't exactly leave me with a sense of achievement. I probably consume far too much wine.
On a more constructive note:
- The exercise helps. I feel better in the morning if I get some exercise than if I just sit in front of the TV. Trying to keep dinners light and not eat to close to bedtime helps too, but I'm still often tired.
- I try to fit in exercise during my lunchbreak, as it frees up my evenings.
Housework is an issue: when the house is broadly complete and I can afford it, I want to hire a cleaner to come in once a week. If I leave the house by 08:30 and haven't finished dinner until 21:00 on a typical day, I don't have that much time to dedicate to housework if I also want to do the other things I'm currently neglecting (see friends, practice music etc). It might also act as an incentive to keep the place tidy...
I see people who have the same working patterns as me, DIY projects or other commitments outside work and who also have kids. I honestly don't know how they manage it all and still have siome time for themselves. To be honest, it's one of the major reasons I don't want any of my own.