Time Management Tips with Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam

You would think that at this stage of my life I would have figured out how to manage my time. On most days I do a good job - although I must admit that Procrastination can be my superpower.

Just like books and articles and tips on decluttering and simplifying, I love reading how to manage time efficiently and am always looking for ways to save time. 

I know I am not alone in this pursuit. On Monday, I attended a full-house presentation by Laura Vanderkam put on by a local healthcare group. I have attended and written about a couple of these seminars starring Peter Walsh, Gretchen Rubin, and others.

Ms. Vanderkam is an author and time management expert. She took the stage and I could tell right away she was going to give a terrific talk. She was all smiles and energy. She has studied the schedules of successful people and her presentation covered her seven favorite strategies for managing the 168 hours a week we all have to spend.

Now, I am going to briefly share them with you.

1. Mind your hours - Look at where your time is going. She keeps a written spreadsheet schedule set up in 30 minute increments, but she says there are also computer/phone apps that will help with this. She suggests doing this for work hours and leisure hours. Once you see where you are spending your time, you can begin to determine what you like most about your schedule, what you want to do more of, and what you want to get off your plate. 

2. Look forward - We build the lives we want and then time saves itself, she says. Her suggestion is to list anything you want to spend time doing and goals you want to achieve both personally and professionally this year. Then pretend it is the end of 2018 and give yourself a performance review. What three amazing things came about in your personal life? In your professional life? These are your top priorities for the year. Post the list prominently where you will see it every day. This list will inform your choices.

3. First things first - Fill your life with things that deserve to be there. Time will stretch to accommodate what you choose to put into it. We live our lives in weeks, not days, she says. Take Friday afternoon and think through the coming week. List the top three priorities in your career, your personal life, and your own self care. Get as many of them scheduled at the first of the week as you can because stuff will come up to throw your week into a tailspin.

4. Move time around - Perhaps you can schedule a split shift which means you work in the morning, go to your kid's soccer game in the afternoon, and then do work in the evening. This doesn't have to happen every day, but if you have the flexibility to do this once or twice a week, take advantage of work/life integration. Same goes for exercise or reading - the time is there. Stop looking for the perfect time each day to go to the gym or play in your sketchbook. Things don't have to happen daily or at the same time. Look at your week and choose. View time more holistically.

5. Build in space - Leaving space in your week invites opportunity in a way a cluttered calendar can't. Be careful with the word 'yes'. Do a calendar triage. What's already on your calendar? What do you really not want to do? What can you minimize - have shorter meetings? Make a phone call instead of holding a meeting? What can you outsource?

6. Monitor your energy - Make time, not just take time, to exercise and sleep. Your brain needs breaks. Falling down the internet rabbit hole is a fake break. What can you put into your workdays and weekends that will add to your energy level and rejuvenate you? Be productive about scheduling leisure time. Think about it intentionally.

7. Use bits of time - Five minutes here, ten minutes there add up. Take these bits of time to do something that adds joy to your day: read a few pages in a book or magazine, step outside and breathe, talk to someone face-to-face, look at the clouds.

I admit I have over the years incorporated many of these suggestions, I just didn't have a name for them. As a freelance writer I have to pay attention to how I schedule my time. But as someone who works from home, a lot of my time gets frittered away. Actually, I am OK with that. My brain breaks include staring out the window, having a cup of tea and a cookie, or maybe a short phone conversation. Oh, and naps are a top priority!

One suggestion that she gave to a recently retired woman during the Q&A time that I found especially helpful was to compress what you have to do in a chunk of time (e.g., run all your errands on Tuesday morning) and schedule what you want to do during the rest of the week. I have a tendency to do chores and run errands willy-nilly when I think of them. It feels as if I am always doing maintenance tasks so I am going to pay special attention to this tip.

There you go. No more excuses. Pick one of her suggestions to start with and see how it works for you. Then you can try another one. I bet they will make your life more blessed and less stressed!

Ms. Vanderkam has several books out including I Know How She Does It - How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time; and 168 Hours - You Have More Time Than You Think. Her latest, to be published in May, is Off the Clock - Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done.

If you are interested in seeing Ms. Vanderkam in action, here is a link to one of her TED Talks.

All I Want for Christmas...

This year as a Christmas gift to myself I have hired a professional organizer. Although I have a shelf full of books on decluttering (ironic, I know) and am pretty good about keeping my things organized and tidy, I do believe stuff sneaks under the door and in through the windows when I am sleeping. As I get older, the task of dragging items out of closets and cabinets and deciding what stays and what goes is exhausting enough. Having someone who can help with that chore and also pack up the discards and take them to either a charity shop or the garbage bin is pure luxury.

Seeking inspiration for this undertaking, I have been revisiting Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (that I wrote about in 2015 here). I also dipped into her recent book Spark Joy in which she tells more about discerning 'joy' and offers illustrations of her concepts. If you have read either of her books, you know that her theory is to only keep those items that spark joy or at least are practical and make your life run smoothly. So instead of deciding what to discard, the focus is on choosing what to keep.

Ms. Kondo suggests approaching this task by category and lays out a specific order: clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous, and finally, sentimental items. I decided to follow this plan.

My first two-hour session with Lori the Organizer meant that we dug into my clothes closet. Granted, I don't have a huge wardrobe but still Lori ended up taking away two large bins full of tops, pants, shoes, coats, purses, and scarves. Plus, one trash bag full of throwaways.

So far, so good. 

Before she left, we set up a second appointment and talked about the next category: books. 

At the time — this was just a few days ago — I felt I was ready to tackle this part of the plan. But I have since had a change of heart (as you might imagine). I realized that for me, books are sentimental items and should come last...or maybe never. Some of my books have been with me for so long I would surely miss them if they were gone. En masse, my bookshelves offer comfort and companionship. 

So you know what, I am not going to worry about the books! I usually donate a stack a couple of times a year to a historic home book sale, so I am passing that category and going straight to miscellaneous. (I don't feel the need to pay her to watch me sort through papers which are pretty much under control anyway.)

I told her I thought it was more important to my well-being and sense of accomplishment if we went through the places that I knew held items I could easily part with. There are a couple of small storage closets, pantry shelves, under the bed bins, and kitchen cabinets that can be dealt with. 

Besides the books, the biggest collection of stuff I have acquired in the past five or six years are art and craft supplies. I do love buying art supplies and taking classes and somehow a ton of watercolor paints, brushes, decorative papers, sketchbooks, stickers and stamps, tools, and pretty much any shiny thing that has caught my eye at the Dollar Tree has settled quite comfortably into my life. 

Only now, not so comfortable. 

But I get ahead of myself. Lori will be here Monday and we will tackle together the pantry and kitchen cabinets and drawers and perhaps move on to discovering what is under the bed. Who knows what evil lurks there!

Everyone needs a little help now and then clearing out, and Lori and I will tackle this project together. I am not looking for minimalism. All I want for Christmas is just a little breathing room.

From Pillar to Post

I have been jumping from pillar to post in my reading this past week. I started and put down two mysteries: Neon Rain by James Lee Burke because I could tell right away it was not suitable for bedtime reading, and Dead Angler by Victoria Houston in which the main character - a widowed dentist - couldn't stop lusting after the town sheriff instead of trying to discover who killed the angler.

Moving on.

I did finish Mr. Dixon Disappears by Ian Sansom. It is the second in the Mobile Library series (here are my thoughts on the first). In this installment - more of a comic novel than a mystery - Tumdrum's mobile librarian Israel Armstrong is accused of theft and kidnapping and finds himself in many an outlandish situation. Laugh out loud funny. 

I recently wrote about attending an event with organizer and declutter guru Peter Walsh (here). The only book of his that the library had as an ebook was Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight. I reserved it and finally it arrived on my Kindle. In it he outlines a six-week program that is guaranteed to change my life (if only!). I am just beginning the book's introductory section but may skip ahead to the 'lose the clutter' bits.

And finally, I just started a mystery in which the action takes place on the Isle of Lewis, the northern most spot in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. I am just a few chapters into the first book of the Lewis Trilogy by Peter May.  In The Blackhouse, Detective Sergeant Fin McLeod is sent to his home village on the island to investigate a murder that is similar to one he worked on in Edinburgh. I have heard good things about these books. 

By the way, a blackhouse is the traditional stone-and-earth dwelling with a thatched roof found on the islands.

So there you have it. I am not sure if today finds me at the pillar or at the post. Where might you be in your reading?

Let it Go by Peter Walsh

Usually around the beginning of the year I like to read a de-cluttering book to inspire me to do a bit of weeding out. This year I did one better. On Monday night I attended a presentation by Peter Walsh, author of many books on organization and getting rid of stuff. He is also host of the television show Clean Sweep. 

With his soft Australian accent, I found him to be very engaging. He was energetic, had a great sense of humor, and was totally charming. He wandered from the stage to the audience and gave out hugs to some of the (mostly) women attending. I felt sort of like I was sitting in the audience of an Oprah show. 

I liked him.  

Here's the short version of his presentation. 

Basically there are two types of stuff we hold on to:

I-might-need-this-someday clutter - "There is nothing wrong with this 'thing' and I paid good money for it and it might come in handy one day."

and

Memory clutter - "If I let this go I am going to lose or dishonor the memory of the person, place, or achievement from the past that it represents."

I am guilty of both. 

It's with good reason, he says, that we use language such as drowning, suffocating, and can't breathe when we talk about the stuff cluttering our spaces. And our lives.

"It's not about the stuff," he says, "it's about the life you wish to live. So try this: when you leave here and arrive home, before you unlock the door to your house, think about what you want FROM your house. Use that list as the standard for your stuff. If it helps you create what you want from your space, keep it. If not, let it go."

I took his advice and when I got home I stopped for a few moments before I put my key in the lock. I thought about seven years ago when I completely changed every surface in my small house. The floors, the paint colors, the entire bathroom, knocked out a wall to connect two rooms, had a fireplace built, and designed storage. I got rid of unwanted furniture, books, lamps, wall art, etc., etc., etc. I dreamed of sleek and uncluttered and serene. I wanted a contemporary, curated haven. And I had it...then.

But, when I opened the door to my house Monday night, I saw piles of books with a few magazines thrown in for good measure; a desk with a clear work space the size of a handkerchief; an old laptop stored in the box that the new one came in; a tote bag full of receipts, brochures, maps, and other paper memorabilia from past travels (I swear I am going to put them in a scrapbook some day!); and three magazine holders storing past years' tax returns and backup information sitting on the floor in front of a bookcase. 

And that is just what I could see. I won't even go into what I knew was behind closed doors and stashed away in drawers. 

Besides being motivated to acknowledge how much is in my home that is not contributing to 'curated and uncluttered', I had this insight as to the tote bag full of 'memory clutter' from my travels: I keep it because it is evidence that I have (or eventually, had) a LIFE. Mr. Walsh would tell me I need to honor and respect those items. Either pull out the 'treasures' and preserve them in some way that honors them or throw the whole bag away. Clean sweep.

His latest book is Let It Go. He was signing copies after the presentation but I didn't buy it so as not to add to more book clutter. So I can't really recommend it although I am sure it is useful. My library does have one of his others - an ebook - which I now have on reserve. 

A few other points:

Find a charity, any charity, to donate to. Don't worry about finding the right one or a good home for the stuff you want to get rid of.

Find the treasures and treat them with honor and respect.

Set a limit on how much space you allow shoes, or kitchen implements, or hobby supplies to occupy. (I tried this with books and had settled on three well-curated bookcases. Now they are jammed full and books have taken over the tops of tables, my desk, and even a footstool.)

Stop using the word 'later' as in 'I will put it away later.' Don't put things down, put them away.

There are two times in life - Now and Too Late.

That last one might stop you in your tracks. It did me.