Time Is Life

have done some page-flipping.  There are an awful lot of statistics, facts and figures in this book.  Most interesting and helpful are the many real-life anecdotes Vanderkam includes.Here are the criteria for being included in the research for the book:

1.  Being a woman.

2.  Having at least one child.

3.  Making $100,000 a year or more.

4.  Filling out a time log for an entire week, all 168 hours’ worth.

What I would really like to read is a book about time use for single mothers earning minimum wage with at least two children and receiving no child support.  That would be a truly heroic book.  But, as my son pointed out, such women don’t have time to fill out time surveys.  (True story:  Back when Gideon was in grade school we had to take him to the emergency room one night because he’d swallowed a fishbone and was complaining about throat pain.  A strikingly-attractive woman in her mid-30’s checked us in.  Weeks or months later I was in the grocery store, and there in one of the aisles was a store employee, a striking-attractive woman in her mid-30’s, checking the shelves.  I went up to her:  “You look so familiar.  Do I know you?” I asked.  We figured out that she had been on duty at the ER the night we came in.  “Wait a minute,” I said.  “You work nights at the ER and days here?” Yes, she said.  She had a five-year-old son to support.  How I wish I could have interviewed her!  But she had no time for such things.  All I can tell you is that she looked very, very tired.)

So you may not fulfill those four criteria, and neither do I.  It may not do a whole lot for your own use of time to read about the woman who goes out to the nail salon sometimes on a weeknight when her child is in bed and her husband occupied at home.  Nothing wrong with that, if you want to indulge in such things.  But as the book went on I was impressed with a couple of key insights:

1.  I’m always saying that I don’t have as much time as someone else who seems to get more done than I do.  But that’s ridiculous.  I have exactly as much time as everybody else in absolute terms, and way more in relative terms.  I don’t have a special-needs child (as a number of these women do) or a heavy travel schedule or a demanding boss.  I need to quit excusing myself.

2.  Sometimes being too efficient, doing too much ahead of time, is counterproductive.  Vanderkam tells a truly horrifying story about a woman with three small daughters who followed this routine for each week,  I believe doing this unbelievable amount of work on Sunday night:

a)  checking the weather for the week,

b)  picking an outfit for each day and hanging it on a separate hanger on a special closet rod, with

c)  shoes with the laces untied underneath each outfit, and

d)  any items needed for that day–I think there was a section for each weekday–on the shelf above.  So, the Brownie uniform was on the shelf above the Wednesday outfit, if that was the day for the Brownies’ meeting, or the ballet clothes above the Friday one, or whatever.

There was actually more to it than I’ve listed, I believe, but I’m excused from going back and looking it up because I don’t know how I’d do that in an audiobook.  Vanderkam points out that the weather could change, or a class could be canceled or rescheduled, or the Brownie leader could decide that everyone had to dress up as a cartoon character for the meeting, in which case all the prep time for that activity would be wasted.  I am very rarely in the camp of doing too much ahead of time, but it’s a point to consider nonetheless.

3.  It can make sense to pay someone else to do work rather than doing it yourself.  I’m not sure what I’d be willing to outsource, but it is true that we can drive ourselves crazy thinking that we have to do everything ourselves.  I was reminded, as I so often am, of a quote from Gaudy Night.  (Have you read this classic yet?  Why not?)  Harriet Vane, the main character, is back at her Oxford college for a gaudy (a celebration) and runs into a former classmate who has married a farmer and is now struggling to help her husband make the land pay. Harriet says:

It’s absurd that you should have to do this kind of thing.  I mean, pick your own fruit and get up at all hours to feed poultry and slave like a navvy.  Surely it would have paid far better for you to take on some kind of writing or intellectual job and get someone else to do the manual work.

Harriet parts from the estimable wife, feeling “as if she had seen a Derby winner making shift with a coal-cart.”  (quotations accessed via Google Books.)  I would never, ever pay someone else to pull weeds or plan/plant my garden or make dinner, but I do think wistfully sometimes about having someone do the cleaning.  I keep the house picked up pretty well and do the laundry, but boy, not to do any vacuuming, dusting, floor mopping or bathroom cleaning would be great.  But then I’d miss out on the exercise, and if I’d just fit it into little 15-minute chunks of time when I’m taking a break from writing or other sitwork, well . . .

On the other hand, Deb Perelman over at Smitten Kitchen has a cleaning lady:  “Then I looked at the kitchen floor and asked Alex if we could get the cleaning lady to come back, oh, 72 hours after her last visit. It’s Tuesday, and the grimy floor and I are still awaiting his response.”  (SK is the world’s greatest cooking blog.  Have to say it, even though I also have a cooking blog, although my focus is a little different from hers.)

I am all inspired to start back up with keeping a time log myself.  The last time I did that I found myself just billowing with productivity and energy.  So we’ll see.