The accounting of time
Time is one of our most valuable assets. It is fleeting, never enough, too long, too short, and never fully utilized. As a parent, I am reminded of this truth every day… My kids are growing in the blink of an eye, my parents are aging and somehow, I cannot find the time to maintain this newsletter, while I am too busy selling my time. We are all salespeople, all in the business of selling our time and knowledge for monetary value. I’m selling my time, so I can finance my family's livelihood and be able to finance my after-hour times with my family.
Time management has a significant impact on my mental health. As a working mother, it is an art to balance time between my work priorities and my personal commitments. I value experience and I value time spent creating memories that will live forever. I have some concentrated periods of extreme business due to regulatory and audit deadlines and my commitment to shorten our month-end close timeline. This is added to other regular emergencies related to the nature of my responsibilities (for example, ensuring that payroll is processed and funded timely, tax filing, vendor payments and etc…). I also try to carve out time for my personal growth, and personal relationships and to support minority and female founders.
One of my goals for 2023 is to “mind my time” and better utilize this valuable asset. In minding my time, I want more time for enjoyment, for my family, and for my mission. Here are 4 different buckets that I have used to categorize my time.
1 | My paid time:
This is my productive time, time that is reported to the IRS, time that I pay tax on, and time that finances my lifestyle. During our offsite, we did this exercise “A day in the life”, which forced me to objectively look at my work calendar. I was quite satisfied with how I have improved my calendar management in the past months through the following actions:
Predicting peak times, setting expectations, and creating realistic workflows. For example, the first two weeks of the month are usually the busiest and I limit my focus time to other projects.
Coaching my team and delegating more responsibilities to them. Win-win on both sides as my team is up-leveling and I am also able to tackle more complex issues and pursue other strategic opportunities.
Raising red flags earlier, being vocal, and saying no to BS, useless tasks, or processes. I am challenging assumptions and requests, creating documentation that inevitably results in fewer redundant questions and better filtering.
Working efficiently will remain a challenge. In the past, 80% of my time was spent on BS, while 20% was dedicated to real added-value work. I do feel that as of now the ratio is about 65% BS and 35% real work.
2 | My family time:
Dealing with mom guilt.
Mom's guilt is a time killer. I want to cook healthy meals for my family every day, I want to attend all the soccer games, all the gymnastics meets, the teachers' meetings, and the birthday parties. I want to supervise their homework and read books to them every night, I want them to be well-dressed, always clean, and with neat and fresh hairstyles. I want to take them on all the vacations, the Disney cruises, the celebrations. My wants are so far away from my realities and as a mom-in-process, I have:
Learned to ignore the malicious voice that is telling me that I am a bad mother for ordering pizza twice during the week, getting chicken nuggets again, reheating leftovers, or having them make their own peanut butter sandwiches.
Learned to divide and conquer with my husband and have swallowed my pride to ask my in-laws and friends for help when my calendar is crazy.
Learned to teach my kids to value my time and my presence (boundaries). My daughter repeats the same routine at every gymnastics meet. If I miss one, it is not the end of the world.
Learned how to streamline my tasks and use technology to support my parenting. I do their hair every other week and hair time is our privileged time. Audible and Spotify have amazing bedtime stories and podcasts.
Learned to plan vacations in advance and to settle for resort-style low-stress options rather than high-intensity tourist agenda. Yes, I have been saying Nos to my dream of the perfect educational European tour.
And while the mom's guilt is still present, I manage it better by being fully present when I am with them and by establishing clear expectations about my availability from the start. As a result, they have learned to manage their expectations and emotions and to fully appreciate my presence. I may not be able to attend all the gymnastics meets but I volunteer to chaperone the field trip or to be the kindergartener of the day and I am the most attentive parent.
Calendar ownership and accountability.
My husband and I have a strict rule, if it is not on the calendar it is not happening. Guess what, there were a lot of things that were not on our calendar that I was responsible for, in addition to having the dual responsibility of managing my calendar and his calendar. I was assuming the role of personal assistant, reminding him daily that he was supposed to do pickups in 10 minutes, that he had a meeting with his doctor, the plumber, the school group, etc… I gave in to the narrative of him being bad at remembering events and committed myself to fill the gaps.
Why was I doing this? This is so counterintuitive since we had agreed many years ago that my career is more demanding and that he has more and better flexibility than me. Unfortunately, I also suffered from female/spousal guilt.
I am healing, slowly but surely. Nowadays, I barely send any reminders. He has to figure it out. There are a lot of omissions, canceled piano classes, forget doctor appointments, and teachers’ meetings that were forgotten. The kids have been picked up late a couple of times and I do think that our reputation as parents has suffered in the process. However, Mister Husband has slowly been more proactive at owning his side of the calendar (without my reminders). I’m also pleased to report that he has even started to send me reminders about my weekend commitments. Additionally, our daughters have also started to embrace and manage their calendars and are being proactive with the much-needed reminders. If they are late at a birthday party, it is not mommy’s fault anymore. Everyone is to blame, the guilt is shared. Also, the satisfaction of making it is shared and highly celebrated. We celebrate the victory of a perfectly planned weekend.
3 | My give-time:
I am too generous with my time: I spent a lot of time supporting others at the expense of my personal goals. As the oldest in my family and the first grandchild, I get a lot of personal satisfaction from helping others and probably have a “Jesus-Christ complex. I do feel that I am responsible for everyone and everything. This is time spent after work with friends, family, and acquaintances, helping them, advising them, or assisting them with their challenges outside of my core responsibilities.
How am I benefiting from giving my time? There is no IRS deduction for this, unfortunately, because this time is not compensated for or the compensation is purely intangible, with delayed gratification. Is the temporary feel-good satisfaction of helping someone worth me feeling stressed and overwhelmed “? I have learned the hard way that the answer in most cases is No. The more I value my time, the more valuable it becomes, and creating time boundaries is needed for overall productivity. As such, my give-time is being closely monitored and is constrained to a couple of hours per week, with clear agenda, clear goals, and clear results.
4 | My time - Me-time. Why is my me-time the last one being discussed? Is it the least important?
Bring it to the calendar: if it is not in the calendar, it is not happening, this is my rule, our rule. There are a lot of me-time and activities outside of my calendar like the dinners that I forgot I had scheduled with my bestie, the Lizzo concert that I forgot that I paid for 6 months before (😢 and lost my $), the morning journaling that I never remember to do, the painting that I started 2 years ago, the call with my mentor that didn’t get confirmed and etc… I do a horrible job integrating my personal and social calendar to my work and family calendar and implicitly say “no” to many of my personal sources of joy. I say No to me a lot.
Why is it that I always remember to add the school play date to the calendar, but forfeit my scheduled massage because it is not on my calendar? Why do I feel the need to cancel my ladies' lunch on Saturday so I can work on some audit requests? To be honest, I do not have concrete solutions to my lack of commitment to me-time.
As parents and mothers, we tend to always think about ourselves last and the many fire drills in life make us feel less important. I have given up and delayed some personal commitments like this newsletter, writing schedules, friends' trips, and networking opportunities for other priorities that felt more important.
What if I start preemptively blocking my personal time in my calendar? Blocking time for journaling, blocking time to go on a walk and definitely adding my spoken word event, my fitness classes, my pedicure, and my manicure to the calendar. What if I add lunch? A walk with Daisy (our dog)? What if I add some keywords “Urgent and super important”? And there are no more “Maybes” for my me-time invites… What if through me-time, I could become my first priority?
All what ifs, for now… but the year is young… and I probably have time to consider how to better enjoy me-time. Is this possible? How is me-time an asset?
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