Book Recommendation: Tranquility by Tuesday
Laura Vanderkam's time management books help me view time more abundantly.
Most of Laura Vanderkam's book Tranquility by Tuesday is gentle, commiserating, and humorous, but she will also frankly deal out some tough love as needed, and I am here for it.
"...[A]cknowledging that there is time for other things might mean changing a narrative, and changing a narrative is hard. Changing a narrative can require changing an identity. I am no longer the put-upon martyr doing everything for everyone else. I'm a person who could be having fun or could be making progress on my professional goals but, because of my choices, is not. Ultimately there are no prizes given for enjoying your life the least, and there are no prizes given for being too busy to get what matters done. If you like how you spend your time, great! If you don't like it, change it."
So far, when I've recommended books here, I've focused on novels, but today, I want to recommend a recent non-fiction, self-help book.
I believe each of us should be a heroine (or a hero, as I nod to the three men who read this substack), and I believe that great fiction can take us most of the way. When you read good books well, you'll find solace, inspiration, and reflection, which will help you along your way.
Inspiration can't take you the whole way, though. You need to start acting it out, following your calling, choosing the high road, showing love, sharing wisdom, and making witty remarks to your dance partner at the Netherfield Ball.
You can absolutely be a heroine when life is overwhelming; and few things are more heroic than keeping your chin up and doing your duty when you'd rather curl up in a ball.
But it's also possible, in most circumstances, to make life less overwhelming, and this takes some clever logistics and a realistic idea of how you'd like to spend your limited time.
Enter Laura Vanderkam, a mother of five, published author, daily blogger, podcaster, and speaker. Her perspective on time management has helped me shape my life. She blends a statistical analysis of time logs with real-life examples of people who make time for work, family, and hobbies, even during the busiest years of their lives.
Vanderkam looks at actual time use data, which reveals how our perception of our time is often different than reality. When we track the time, we see places that can be tightened or expanded.
Her latest book, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters, is about energy management and adjusting attitudes, from improving sleep, to getting a boost through physical activity, to adding excitement and restorative time through activities that interest you. Yes, there is time for that.
She shares nine strategies:
Give Yourself a Bedtime: For most of us, the only way to get more and better sleep is to be consistent about when we go to bed.
Plan on Fridays: This way, you're not wasting any time on Monday trying to figure out what comes next, nor are you eating up your weekend by using Sunday to plan.
Move by 3 P.M.: Think taking a walk, not doing CrossFit, unless you're really into that sort of thing.
Three Times a Week is a Habit: You don't have to do something every day to reap its benefits. This could be exercise, reading, praying, learning a hobby, or doing something creative.
Create a Back-up Slot: Schedule in a little blank space so that a single crisis doesn't derail your progress for the whole week.
One Big Adventure, One Little Adventure: Create memories by doing something a little out of the ordinary every week. She defines an adventure as something pleasurable, awe-inspiring, meaningful, or at least anecdote-worthy.
Take One Night for You: This is the hardest one for me to implement, but it doesn't have to be an evening. Just make sure that there's some time on the calendar, every week, when you can spend focused time on something that matters to you. For me, it's two and a half hours every Saturday afternoon (Sunday is my back-up slot) to write.
Batch the Little Things: Tiny interruptions pull you out of the moment. Some of these are urgent, but many can be postponed until you can knock a few out at once.
Effortful Before Effortless Fun: Before turning to our electronic devices in our down time, we should spend a few minutes on some effortful fun. It could be a puzzle, a book, some cross-stitch, a board game, you name it. My personal favorite, aside from reading, is to complete a logic grid puzzle. If word problems were your favorite part of math, you should try out logic grid puzzles.
This isn't my first Vanderkam book, but I always find something new and helpful in her work. I first read her flagship time management book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think when I was working sixty-four hours a week right out of college. I wanted to make the most of the hours that weren't going to paid work.
Vanderkam's approach began with simple math, reminding me that if I worked sixty-four hours and slept fifty-six, that still left forty-eight waking hours for other things. I still don't remember that time as particularly restful, but I had space to hang out with my husband, see friends, go to church and community events, and read. I also didn't have a car, so walking everywhere took a lot of time, too, but I would just read as I walked. When I went down to forty-four hours a week a few months later, I was able to commit some of those "extra" twenty hours to volunteer work. Instead of saying, "I don't have time for that," I learned to say, "That's not a priority for me right now."
Life is full of seasons, and I have known my share of sleepless nights and brain-foggy days when I aspire to nothing more than a nap and a good TV show. I've also known months when I'm full of energy, hurrying from one project to the next. I'm confident that strategies like the ones in this book help make tranquility possible in every season.