Neener neener – you can’t make me!

I think I’ve had an epiphany! It would’ve been awesome if I’d had it on Monday, but I did not. I had it yesterday instead. My timing was a bit off.

In addition to realizing that I do not like mixed berries in my smoothies (too many seeds), I realized that I do not like to do things that I have to do.

I start every morning looking at my calendar, which is often quite full. This week has been light with only nine meetings (eight total hours), but there are weeks that most of my working hours are spent in meetings, preparing for meetings, or going to and from meetings.

So, I look at all the things I have to do.  The meetings. The meeting prep. The work on my to do list. Oh, and today I have to run.

And often I resent that stuff. I delight in a canceled meeting. I willfully and deliberately skip my run. I make fitness goals and then BREAK THEM. And then I get mad at myself and say mean things (to myself).

Over the week and a half I was off work, I didn’t have to do anything. I ran a lot (for me) – 25.66 miles in 10 days. Now that running is in my schedule (something I am skipping AS I TYPE THIS), I don’t do it.

Hypothesis:

I am not spending the requisite time on my top priorities, and am, instead, letting high priorities (ie exercise) fall by the wayside.

Investigatory Methods:

I decided it would be an interesting exercise to list my activities in priority order. So I did:

  1. I want to give my sweet baby hugs and kisses when he wakes up in the morning.
  2. I want to spend more time w/ my husband (we don’t have a lot of time together because of divergent schedules (I’m a 5-9 awake person, he’s a 7-12 person).
  3. I want to get up and write.
  4. I want to read/relax/sip wine/eat
  5. I want to exercise.
  6. I want to sleep (loooove sleep)
  7. I want to go to my job so they don’t fire me and keep giving me money.

Then I put them all in a spreadsheet and assigned the amount of time in a typical workweek that I spend on each activity (of course there were going to be spreadsheets, you had to have seen that coming). I totalled everything up and got:

  1. Sleep (as it should be, really) (51.5 hrs/week)
  2. Work (48.5 hrs/week – includes commute)
  3. Baby time – (36 hrs/week; ~an hour in the morning & 3 hrs at night on weekdays, double that time on the weekends)
  4. Solo Architect time – (11 hrs/week, about an hour a day on weekdays)
  5. Writing – (7 hrs/week – I write for an hour every morning)
  6. Read/relax/eat – (7 hrs/week – 30 minutes for lunch/30 minutes between hopping into bed and turning off the light)
  7. Exercise – (5.75 hours/week, mostly on the weekends)

(Bonus: I have an extra unaccounted for hour and 15 minutes each week free! PARTY!)

My analysis:

My priorities, with the exception of work and sleep, totally match how I’m spending my time. Unfortunately Obviously, I need to keep my job. They pay me a decent salary which allows me to keep the Bean in childcare and diapers, and the architect & I housed and warm and fed. And insured.  (However, if you want to pay me a lot of money to work less, let me know. I have a pretty diverse skill set.)

Also, sleep is pretty important. If you take work & sleep out, my priorities and time commitments totally match up! So, I guess I’m doing something right? And, writing, reading/relaxing, and exercising are all gazelle-centered priorities, so it’s good that I’m spending almost 20 hours a week on awake me.

Conclusions/further questions:

I am not exercising more because it is not a high priority. I am exercising almost an hour/day, which is not too shabby. I should take this as my proof that I’m not nearly as screwed up as I think I am, and stop beating myself up for skipping a workout. What happens if I don’t meet my fitness goals? NOTHING. As long as it has a place on my priority list and I’m giving it a certain amount of time, I think I’ll be fine.

Handy dandy mantra:

What I Can, When I Can (I totally made this up ALL BY MYSELF and did not steal it from anyone else on the interwebs. I swear it! Please note that 33% of the words in my mantra are different than Carla’s.)

Bonus mantra: Be nice to me, I’m the only me I’ve got!

tl;dr – just go read MizFit’s post linked above, and you’ll see what I’m planning on remembering going forward.

 

 

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