Comparative Advantage and the Part-Time Life: Part 2 (or, How Your Crappy Attitude Makes It Seem Like You Have No Time)

Since I wrote my last post, I decided it would be a good idea to time myself doing everything. This has been illustrative. While my goal was originally to go about my day as if I wasn't "being watched" it became clear there were some time wasters that could be eliminated immediately. For example, Facebook usage has been banished except for 1 hour in the afternoon and after 6pm, and even at that I only allow 15 minute allowances each hour it's "open."

Additionally, my goal was to prove I have no time for anything and that I need to do more trading off of tasks with other people in order to have my life work. While that may be true, the numbers reveal that is far less my problem than other things...

Myths Busted
If you asked me prior to beginning this experiment where my time went I probably would have replied, work, dogs, and the baby. That's not entirely true. The time I spend with the dogs and the baby are usually of the multi-tasking variety, i.e. working out, cooking, or cleaning while Coco watches, or is carried on my back, cuddling with the dogs on the couch while I write this blog post. You might argue having to do all my tasks with a baby on my back, or being continuously interrupted by either the baby or the dogs' needs is more difficult and stressful so that it seems more time-consuming, however, by just the raw numbers - the dogs and baby are not taking up as much time as I thought. 

Full disclosure: my mother babysits for me a lot. She is a saint. Without her help - my life would be completely unmanageable. My time analysis does not account for any of the time she spends taking care of Coco, during which I'm usually working. Based on the numbers, she, my husband, and babysitters account for 50% of the time-care for Coco. That is significant.

The following analysis is based solely on my activities in a 24 hour period (over the past 6 days.)

Initial Time Analysis

• I spend a little over 11% each (33% total) of my life on 3 tasks: Baby care, Home Care, Work for Pay.
• I spend a whopping 31% of my time sleeping. I thought it would be much less, but that figure doesn't speak to quality of sleep.
• The rest of my time is either what I classify as "wasted time" (Facebook, putzing, emails, wandering around the house wondering what to do) or "me time" which includes working out, hanging out with friends/family, watching TV, reading.
• The time I spend with Mike is usually watching TV or chatting (however, we spend a lot of that chatting time complaining or being generally stressed out.)
• I switch tasks excessively and spend only an average of 20 minutes per task (!), which leads to a feeling of not getting anything done and stress despite the fact that actual time allocated per task is high.

Next Steps


I will be honest, I was shocked by the initial results of my time analysis. I was convinced that all I did was take care of the baby, house, and dogs, never got to see my husband, and got zero sleep or work done. All of that is false. In fact, I spend a lot of time with my husband, but it's of a low quality, mindless variety. The baby and dogs do not demand all that much from me, and I would like to spend more quality time with them too! Keeping house is odious. With the exception of cooking and gardening, I could probably hire someone to do the other tasks, and make up the money spent with more paid work I enjoy and feel more fulfilled doing.

UPDATE: (2 hours after writing this post.) I think another thing "wrong" with my life is that my To Do list is darned near endless. I spend most of my time doing one thing while simultaneously worrying about how I'll possibly get the next thing(s) done. So, even though my time allocation of tasks seems reasonable, the sheer amount of tasks I have either volunteered for, contracted for, expect myself to do, or merely want to do is astonishingly huge. If I compare the amount of time I have in my life (the same 24 hours a day everyone else gets) with the things I anticipate being able to accomplish, I roughly estimate about a 1:3 ratio. As you can see, the math is pure fiction. Essentially, I am living in a fantasy world. I must be stopped.

I'm going to continue this time analysis into the next week and see if I can implement the following changes:

• Change my crappy attitude. I'm always negative and stressed out. Objectively, my schedule is full, but it does not appear to be as unmanageable as I had once believed, and I am getting a considerable amount of additional help from my family. I'm mystified by the apparent disconnect between the external material conditions of my life (pretty good) and my crappy interpretation of it.
• I'm disorganized and constantly being interrupted. This is real. This is probably the largest factor contributing to my crappy attitude. I basically feel like I cannot get anything done, when in reality, I'm getting everything done - I'm just mad and stressed out doing it. I've got to find a way to change that. Maybe just the knowledge that I'm not falling behind is enough? 
• I will try to focus on tasks until completion instead of running around like a chicken without its head.
• Spending more quality time with my family. I think I'm on auto-pilot - floating from one task to the next without any real intention or purpose. I'm always working in panic mode (even though I apparently don't have to) and that leads to my crappy attitude seeping into moments that are anything but crappy and could be a lot more fun, like hanging out with my mom, my husband, my baby, and/or my dogs. I could put on music, I could dance around, I could just know that I'll have plenty of time for everything else and just chill the heck out!

Even after all this - I'm sort of unconvinced that the numbers are telling the right story, which is comical. What it likely points to is how married I am to the idea that I have no time, and my life is unmanageable, rather than the reality of the amount of time I have per task. Don't get me wrong, my analysis reveals poor time management skills and an unusually high rate of switching tasks, which probably leads to a lot more wasted time than I need. But I'm beginning to think my internal life is far more stressful than my external life.