The Mom-Time Vortex

I’ve spent the better part of a month with my nose in various Laura Vanderkam books and puzzling over my own weekly schedule. I think the next place I want to go with this whole “time management” thing is… “mom time,” whether spent at home or at other places, is tricky to categorize. The conversations I had and responses I read last month echoed this sentiment.

I ran into this problem when I attempted the “next step” Vanderkam outlines after tracking 168 hours (one week) of my own time: sorting my time into categories. Not only did I switch activities at a seemingly *insane* pace, but I was also doing more than one thing at time, most of the time. Like reading a book while nursing the baby while tying someone’s shoes. Is that “nurturing”? What if I snapped at one of my kids?

I adore Laura Vanderkam. I would recommend Tranquility by Tuesday to anybody. I think the nine principles she puts forth in that book (p.s., you can see those nine principles in the Libby SAMPLE) could help anyone with their weekly schedule, whether they’re a CEO or a Chieftain or a chef or a mom, who is all of those.

But “mom time” does some weird things. I don’t think Vanderkam ignores mothers (she has five kids), but she does offer advice like outsourcing something that doesn’t give you a lot of joy (laundry) and choosing high-quality care for your children. And… some of us aren’t choosing those options, for good reasons. And so, we end up with many fifteen-minute slots in our week that could be categorized into what scientists (ahem, me) are calling the “Mom-Time Vortex.”

Allow me to explain the (thought) experiment these scientists (yup, still just me) cooked up to simulate the “Mom-Time Vortex.” Participants in the experiment had the hours between breakfast and dinner to:

• Run two baskets of laundry through the wash and fold them

• put the breakfast and lunch dishes in the dishwasher

• make a phone call to the insurance company

• make dinner.

Simple, right?

Each participant wore a device on the wrist of their dominant arm that intermittently magnetized to a vest on their chest. Also, there were an undetermined number of alarms that went off at intervals between 1 and 15 minutes. Participants had to shut them off manually. If ignored, the interval between the next alarm was halved.

Oh, and George. George is an animatronic monkey who can take off his own pants but can’t put them back on. When he says “no,” it sounds a whole lot like “yes,” and vice versa. George loves getting in the car except for when he doesn’t. And participants were responsible for teaching him how to use the toilet.

If productivity—gettin’ through that list—is the goal of time spent at home, even in an unconscious, undeclared way, it can feel like a sadistic Mr. Beast Challenge.

Ladies, we are playing a different game (and the rules are best explained by a mother 10-15 years older than you who lives in the same town).

It’s hard to keep up with the tasks, let alone categorize them. One reader offered regarding her experience:

I have a background in nursing, and any floor nurse will tell you that time management is the make-it or break-it skill in that job. I learned it, even mastered it, in that job. But being a homeschooling mom of many is different in that it is relentless. And the caretaking recipients don’t stay confined to a room, so I have far less choice over what I spend my particular moments on.

Another reader said it was easy to plan out how she wanted her day at home to look, but the plan didn’t hold up in real time: “I found this confusing at first because I considered myself rather type A organized and smart and capable etc, but I could not deal with life with the random time bombs apparently.”

Time Bombs come in all shapes and sizes—sudden sickness, winter weather, a child who’s having a *mood*, the carpool calling to say they can’t drive today, spills (small or catastrophic), the need to run to the store for something immediately. Time bombs make Mom-time tricky to categorize. But it’s still possible to use time in the vortex well, because the goal of a day at home with the kids is not get-it-done productivity.

This is the part where I’m supposed to say what the goal is, if it isn’t that, and here’s the best I’ve got: the goal is presence. Yes, you can be both “present” and “productive,” (and them dishes aren’t going to do themselves [cough cough make your kids do them, they can do it]). Doing what needs done—planned or otherwise—provides the context for familial relationships. The true measure of how you’re “doing” in a day is how willing you are to respond to the thousand and one interruptions, not how far you’re getting down the list.

Okay, I really did think this would be my last go-round on time management, but, as my esteemed editor wrote on the first draft, “leisure is its own whole topic and so is planning” so… same place same time next week?

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On the Calendar: Third Sunday of Lent

The Gospel for tomorrow is the esteemed Woman at the Well. And the only thing I have to add to that is that, because of this one Byzantine Podcast I listen to, I know that Tradition has named that oft-quoted woman, “Photina.”

Here’s her story in John’s Gospel. 🦅

I have thoughts on the poll from two weeks ago and I will revisit it… essentially, 80% of respondents said, yes, I’d be somewhat interested in looking at a breakout of my hours, and 20% said heck no, techno! And I’m wondering if that’s pretty much similar for anything you can count. Not the same people in the 80/20, but, there’s 1/5th of us who don’t want to look at whatever number (like how many times we check our phone in a day!!!), depending on the category. But we’re doing this bedtime thing for Lent that I ALSO have thoughts on, but, I should really go to bed.

Like now.

But in the meantime,