Time management. And pie. And cake.

This was a mixed week. For much of the week I felt better, much less shaky, but on Thursday I made a pie (a heavenly blueberry-peach crumb which the twins inhaled) and noticed that it was hard to manipulate the knife to peel and cut up the peaches. I started wondering if maybe the shakiness is unrelated to my parathyroid and calcium levels. But I don't know what else it could be. Just tiredness? Too much caffeine? Or am I developing an essential tremor, like my father had? But it's not just my hand, and anyway, my hand doesn't exactly shake, it's just hard to control the small movements.

I did finally hear back from my surgeon a couple days ago, a message that said my lab work was fine. I wrote him back to ask why he considered it "fine" when my parathyroid hormone level was below normal. He wrote right back, saying that it was normal for the PTH to be low, that it comes up gradually as you heal.

Well! It would have been nice if someone had told me that a few weeks ago! But good to know it now.

So, I'm just going along, taking my calcium, and trying to eat right and exercise every day, get enough sleep, all that. And I think I'm gradually getting better. I'm also much less nauseated -- that's a problem that dates back to February, when I started taking metformin, and seemed to get worse as my calcium got higher, and then bad again when I developed these post-surgical problems. Having the nausea go away is great! except that it means I'm going to start gaining weight again if I'm not careful. Last night the kids and I ate out at IHOP (our usual Saturday night dinner out) and I ordered grilled tilapia with broccoli, rice, and a salad, from the over-55 section of the menu. It was very sad.

This week I picked up a book from the library that I had put on hold after reading a review of it: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. It's a great book for people like me who are always trying to manage their time while failing utterly. He basically shows that we can't manage time because our time is who we are, we are nothing more than our time. Four thousand weeks of it, to be exact (on average).

Many of the points he makes in the book are things I'd already realized, but each time I've come to one of those realizations I think I'm being a pessimist. A defeatist. A giver-upper. How lovely to find all those ideas in this book. Like, let me look for an example... well, OK, people often think if you get your life organized enough, you will have time for all the things you want to do. First of all, Burkeman says, you will never have time for all the things you think you want to do, so just forget that one out of hand. Also, if you get good at doing certain things quickly, such as responding to email, that task will just multiply, because all the people you respond to will respond right back to you quickly, and then you'll have even more email to answer. 

One piece of advice often given in time-management books (such as Getting Things Done by David Allen, which I started reading a while back and then put on hold because I decided I couldn't follow its advice until I made room in the file cabinets, a task which is also on hold) is to do the easy stuff immediately, get it off your desk. Respond to that email, answer that phone call, do that little cleaning task. The problem is, as Burkeman notes, that you can spend all day -- every day -- doing those little tasks and never get to any of the bigger things you supposedly want to work on. 

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you don't actually want to do the big project. Maybe you just want to have a happy little life with all the little things taken care of. I think parenthood involves a lot of that. Often I feel as though all those little things are what my life consists of. Sign that form, help the kids with homework, do the laundry, make dinner, do the dishes, feed the cats.

But if you do want to do the big projects, like write the novel I'm messing around with, you'll probably need to let more of the little things slide. Have a very messy house. Let the email pile up. You don't have time to do everything, not even close to everything, so figure out what you really want to do and do that instead of (all) the little things. You can't do it all.

Like on Thursday, I wanted to make this pie. I had numerous other things, big and small, clamoring for my attention, but I decided to make the pie. It took a long time, especially since I cleaned the kitchen first (and then had to clean it again afterwards). In fact, it took most of the afternoon. That's another one of Burkeman's points: tasks always take a lot longer than you think they will. They perversely refuse to correspond to the schedule you have set up for them. Live with it. Things take the time they take.

One thing Burkeman doesn't really talk about is that you can be both -- you can be the person who messes around doing little jobs on one day and the person who focuses on the big stuff another day. And the person who spends several hours playing computer solitaire on yet another day. Time management books always seem to assume that you'll be one kind of person (a frantically productive one) all the time, but I doubt if very many people are. I'm not. When I spend a few days working on an "important" job I start to think that I want to be that kind of person all the time, and then I get cross with myself when those three productive days are followed by three weeks of nonsense. But guess what? That's life. I can't really picture myself doing important stuff every day. Now and then seems to be the best I can do.

I was momentarily diverted by a section on productivity that had three principles (I love lists like this). The three principles are as follows:

1. Pay yourself first. Do your important work first and leave the niggling stuff for later. In other words, I should write a chapter of my novel in the morning, and leave the dishes and email for the afternoon. Sometimes I do this. Sometimes I play computer solitaire instead.
   
2. Limit your work in progress. This means that you should have no more than three projects going at once. It sounds good, and Burkeman says it "produced a startlingly large effect" on his life. But I am not sure what counts as a project for me. The novel, certainly. But does the Classics Challenge count? Since I'm always reading, and the books for the CC just get wrapped into my regular reading, I'm not sure that's a project. What about the sewing machine (out of its box but still not yet used)? Is something a project if you're feeling stuck and can't seem to start it? And what about cleaning the house? Is that a project, or just one of those little things that prevent me from "paying myself first"? Maybe the files are a project and vacuuming isn't. It's a puzzle.
   
3. Resist the allure of middling priorities. This means that you should not get distracted by things that you also want to do, but which you've decided aren't as important as your three big things. But again, I have trouble with this. Is the sewing project important, or is it a "middling priority"? If I want to take a break from the novel and outline the next book in the series (ha ha), does that count as part of the same project or not?
   

In another section Burkeman talks about capitalism, and the American way of making as much money as possible, supposedly so that we can retire and enjoy ourselves. But another way to approach life is to make less money and enjoy ourselves more along the way, which is what has always appealed to me. On the Zoom call with my old grad school friends and advisor last weekend, my advisor asked me, "Do you think you'll ever work again?"

I felt guilty. This man spent countless hours dragging me through my PhD program. And here I am at 61, unemployed, not much to show for myself, not getting a lot done. Not working for pay. I can't remember exactly how I answered, but the gist is that I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I don't have any great desire to get a job. Maybe if I could think of a really fun job (and "fun" for me is not necessarily what others would consider fun), I would do it. But I have no great desire to work again. If we need the money, of course, I will have to.

In the meantime, I am a lazy slob. If I got more serious about writing, or even if I decided to devote myself to housekeeping and cooking, it would be easier to justify my current existence. But if I'm being honest, I seem to like taking things slow. Reading fanatically, writing sporadically, enjoying the twins' company, playing with the cats, taking walks in the evenings. Making the occasional pie.

Here's a typical quote from Burkeman (he says things like this all through the book):

Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now--that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you'll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order.

And, of course, if by some miracle you do get to that point, immediately afterwards something will break.

And yet. And yet. Isn't housework all about this? When you're managing a home, even doing it very badly, as I do, every day you are attempting to put things (back) into perfect working order. Then it all falls apart and you start over. That's the very nature of running a home. It is Sisyphean.

But that aside, of course he's right. The moment of truth is always now.

He talks about how awful to-do lists are, and of course I had already read this in Getting Things Done. When David Allen told me to-do lists were terrible, I ignored him, because I love to-do lists. But when Oliver Burkeman told me they're awful, I paid a little more attention. It is absolutely true that I have a hard time getting my to-do lists done anymore. I am currently the Queen of Not Doing Things on To-Do Lists. 

The thing about to-do lists is that they work well when you have a bunch of things you have to do that day -- meetings, classes, appointments. But I don't have a lot of those going on right now. On a typical day I have either one or none. Quite often none. The things I must do are so simple and repetitive that it's really a waste of time to put them on a list: get the kids up, feed the kids, get the kids out the door to school, feed the cats, feed myself. And at the end of the day: make dinner, get the kids to bed, feed the cats again, take a shower. In between, there's a lot of open space. I have many things I need to do and would like to do, to fill that space. But the world won't really end if I go to the grocery store on Tuesday instead of Monday, or if I clean the bathroom next week (or month) rather than this week. I have a lot of flexibility.

So when I make a to-do list that says I will do x, y, and z today, it's kind of arbitrary. And sometimes, especially when I make the list the night before, by the time I'm looking at the list, ready to do the next thing, it isn't what I want to do anymore. So I do nothing, because the things I might want to do aren't on the list, and I've forgotten about them.

Two things from the books that I'm experimenting with right now, both very interesting:

1. From Burkeman, a "done" list instead of a to-do list. The last four days I've written down each thing I've accomplished. No plans, no to-do list -- just going along through my day doing whatever I think of, or whatever jumps into my face and demands doing. These "done" lists are illuminating. For instance, yesterday (Saturday)'s list includes this stretch of accomplishments: 

• Cut up a peach for Teen A
• Cut up another peach for Teen A
  
• Fixed Brazi Bites for Teen B
• Cleaned kitchen, loaded dishwasher
• Made a schedule for weekend homework (with twins' input)
• Encouraged Teen B to do 15 minutes of Membean (language arts homework)
  
• Helped Teen B with math homework
  
• Made cinnamon toast for Teen A
  
• Helped Teen A with math homework
  
• Made a smoothie for everyone
  
• Made ramen for the twins
  
• Cleaned the kitchen again, finished loading the dishwasher and ran it
  

It seems, from this list, incredibly obvious why I never get anything done when the twins are around. Of course, they should do some of this food preparation themselves -- Teen A could surely cut up his own peaches -- but I was trying to keep them in a good mood, due to all the homework. The days of no homework on the weekends are apparently over. There was a lot more today, too.

I doubt if I would make a "done" list every day. It seems like something you would do if you wanted to encourage yourself to do things, but not worry about if you didn't feel like you needed it. Maybe it's a way to wean myself off to-do lists. I'll see.

2. A "master to-do list" instead of a daily one. This is kind of from both books, although Burkeman calls it an "open list" and Allen calls it a list of "incompletion triggers." The idea is to dump all your possible, nagging to-do's into one giant list so you don't lose them, even things you probably will never do but keep thinking about. That way you (supposedly) can stop thinking about them -- if one pops into your head at 3 am you can tell yourself, don't worry, it's on the list (or you can get up, put it on the list, and go back to sleep). 

I've started a master list -- it has over 160 items on it so far, and I know I'm missing lots of things. I plan to work on it for a while and then print out a copy to refer to. The list, I must say, is fascinating. I quickly realized David Allen's sample list was missing a lot of things I needed (it was obviously written by a man with a wife who runs the household). Oliver Burkeman doesn't provide a sample list, per se, but the examples he gives lead me to believe that he is a renter, not a homeowner. My list has the following categories:

• 
  Housework
• Yard work
• Home maintenance
  
• Food
• Shopping / Errands
• Clothes / Linens
• Finances / Planning
• Technology
• Cars
  
• Personal / Medical Care
• Cat Care
• Twin Care
• Husband Care
• Writing
• Reading
• Hobbies & Avocations
  
• Activities
• Social / Political
  
• Special Days (i.e., holidays, birthdays)
  

I don't know if these are all the categories I need, or whether I actually need all of these. I'm just playing with the concept right now. But it's really interesting to see what goes in each category. For example, I wasn't sure I needed a "Reading" category (couldn't it be part of "Hobbies"?), but it turns out it has nine things in it (so far). There's all the planning I do, and the recording of what I read, and the different places I find books, and the culling of bookshelves when they threaten to collapse. It's an important part of my life -- it makes sense that it would have a lot of tasks associated with it.

Laid out like this, the responsibilities of my life seem so different from how I usually view them. I wake up in the morning feeling bad, because I have all these things to do that I don't want to do (clean things, cook things, call people I don't want to call). But looking at my master list, which also includes "Halloween cards" and those nine tasks related to reading, makes me feel peaceful and happy. What a nice life I have, I think.

So anyway, a lot of thoughts about mostly a lot of nothing, but I do feel as though I had a few epiphanies while doing this. 

Onward into the middle of September. Today is Rocket Boy's 67th birthday. I got a cake for him, and we ate some of it already (I called him, but he didn't answer, probably off adventuring somewhere). I'm trying not to feel wistful about all that. He doesn't like his birthday anyway, doesn't like the idea of turning older. But we all are doing that. And it would have been nice to celebrate with him. Well, I'm sure we'll talk tonight. 

Post-Note: I just noticed I left the "H" out of "Birthday"! Birtday, for heaven's sake. And no one noticed, because I'm the editor in the family. Sigh. Probably a good thing if I don't go back to work!