Rebecca, Catching up (Days 18-20, 25)

Free up time.
Do what you love.
Spend time with people you love.
Streamline your life.

Most of my time is spent doing what I love...except when I browse the web too long, a time-wasting procrastination-style habit I've been changing in the past few weeks. (Removing my facebook and google reader apps from my iPhone definitely helped.

But looking at these four items together, I want to make sure I've got enough time to spend with the people I love--and I think the key to the first item, freeing up time--with the goal of spending more time with husband and child--is streamlining whatever else I can.

My plan: On work days, I'm going to try to work more efficiently, with a clearer end point for my day in mind--for the express purpose of picking my son up early from day care. Even an extra half hour with my toddler is precious time that I don't want to lose.

To further increase our quality evening time together, I need to streamline our evening routines. Healthy meals are important to me, but it can be time-consuming to prep and cook good food on a work night.

So, I've been reading up on slow cookers and pressure cookers, with the goal of minimizing time spent cooking in the evenings. We already have a pressure cooker that we never use, and I asked for and received a nice slow cooker for my birthday.

If anyone has great, tried-and-true pressure cooker and/or slow cooker recipes that are vegetarian, please share--I'm all ears!

Christa, Day 18: Why, Wherever DO You Find the Time?

Oh, Mr. Zen Habits guy, please stop asking me to find more time. If I had more time, I likely wouldn't be as interested in voluntary simplicity. Probably, anyway. Because I'd be happily busy doing all of the important stuff. In fact, thinking about how I never get to stop and hardly have a moment to myself makes me want to cry.

At present, even farting around on the Internet is in some way goal focused. Reading about simplicity and frugality. Looking for design advice so I can make my home more comfortable and inviting. Searching for social media strategies that will help me launch a business more effectively. And so on.

With all that in mind, here's today's idea:

Free up time. Find ways to free up time for the important stuff. That means eliminating the stuff you don’t like, cutting back on time wasters, and making room for what you want to do.

But maybe I'm looking at it all wrong? What exactly is "important"?

Just for laughs, I decided to think about what I would be doing if I did have more time. And what do you know? A lot of what I'd be doing is pretty much what I try to squeeze into every little corner of my life so I don't have to give it up. Silly pointless crafts. Projects like this one. I just wouldn't feel as rushed as I seem to feel all the time now.

The things I'd do if I had more time that I don't do much now would be things like read or go for long walks and of course spend more time with my daughter. (The first two don't sound very important, but they're important enough to me that I used to do both every day.)

Or I'd try to sew a bit more so I finally go good enough at it that I could make more of her clothes and toys that weren't just glorified pillows. Maybe I'd try jogging again - a pastime that literally cannot fit into my schedule unless I get over my fear of jogging after dark. I'd write fiction again. Try to enjoy cooking. Or expand my horizons, though how I'd do that is escaping me at the moment.

None of which is very important, except in the context of my mental health. Maybe I'd paint again. Important? Not important?

Wait, were we freeing up time for the important things on our Day 1 lists? Because the second item on mine was:

Doing more of the things that make me happy, which is sometimes actually work and sometimes messing around with cloth or painting my furniture.

Please please please don't read this as my just ranting about how there's never enough time. Naturally there's never enough time for anyone, even uber achievers. We're all going to die someday and we're all going to die with something, probably lots of somethings, left undone. It's just that right now I do kind of wish there were more hours in the day because work and silly maintenance tasks - why do you think I hate cooking so much - get in the way of being able to GET. THINGS. DONE.*sigh*

But wait! I'm not leaving this on a very action-oriented note.

For today, I'm just going to think about my biggest time wasters. And also why I'm prone to wasting time. What do I GET out of, say, clicking around on Facebook - and why am I doing that instead of getting my Adwords certification or some other thing? If I can figure that out, I can conquer the world.

Julia's Days 17 and 18: Because yesterday's post apparently never went through

Yo, dawg. I heard you liked blog entries about people's efforts to simplify their lives. So I posted an entry about limiting spending here, and one about freeing up time here, so you can read blog posts you might enjoy.