Do You Have the Time?

Do you guys all know that object lesson involving rocks, sand, and a jar? Or I've also seen it done with marshmallows, sugar and a jar (yummier that way)? You know the one that's supposed to teach you the importance of prioritizing your time, and if you get the big stuff in the jar first, all the little stuff fits around it?

I hate that object lesson.

Because, unfortunately, time doesn't actually work that way. If I spend 22 minutes writing in my journal, I don't have those 22 minutes to watch a sitcom on Hulu. I can't go back and fill in the cracks of time when I was staring at my journal page deciding what to write with the sitcom. Or say I go to work for eight hours, and of those hours there are 22 minutes that I was doing something other than working. I can't compile those into a sitcom either. You get 24 hours and it passes you in a linear fashion, you don't get to go back an fill in the cracks.

I mention this, because I have not been able to do all the things that I want to do every day, and so I've been thinking about time management a lot lately. Here is a list of things that I would do every day in an ideal world.

• Work out for an hour
• Shower and dress 
• Sit down and eat three meals a day
• Go to work (well, this obviously would only be M-F)
• Write in my journal
• Seriously study the scriptures
• Spend quality time on my knees in prayer
• Visit with friends
• Read
• Watch a TV show
• Practice the piano
• Start practicing the viola again
• Clean my house for 5-15 minutes
• Call a family member
• Find an opportunity to serve someone 
• Sleep for eight hours

And that list doesn't even include all the things I would like to be engaged in that are not daily things, such as finding a guy, planning a menu and preparing food, budgeting and balancing the checkbook, attending Church and church activities, post entertaining things on this blog for your entertainment, and so on.

I've never been able to do all of the things on that list in a single day. Minutes slip by you while you're driving to and from places, they get lost in the walk from the car to the house and all of the coming home rituals (hang keys, take off shoes and coat, stash the purse, etc), they get used on other things like going to the bathroom. And even more than all the minutes that you spend transitioning between activities or whatever, there's the mental fatigue. I don't think I could be "on" enough to stay focused and actively engaged the entire 16 hours I'm awake.

So everything becomes a tradeoff. Do I practice the piano, or do I go to bed on time? Do I call a family member, or do I read a novel?

I think overall, I've figured things out and I lead a pretty balanced life. I look for opportunities to serve others, I schedule time with friends, I get to the gym, and I make sure that I get some down time. And I feel like I make sure that I'm getting the most important (to me) things done. But I can't help but be a little sad about all the things that I just don't have the time to be doing that I'd like to be doing (e.g. I would totally be a way better housekeeper if I didn't also have a full time job). 

So how do you do it? How do you decide which things are the Best Things and which are the Good Things that can get cut off the to do list when time runs out?

On Eating

When I lived in Key West I participated in this organic vegetables co-op called Annie's Buying Club. The theory was that sourcing organic food in bulk reduces the cost, so a bunch of people pool their money, Annie orders bulk organic items, and then distributes a box every week. Or in my case every other week. I didn't care so much about the organic part (I think that organic farming has it's own tradeoffs), but when I joined I was looking to add vegetables in my life, and I was sick of broccoli. The co op forced me to learn new cooking techniques and to use tons of different vegetables, some of which I'd never even heard of.

The thing I liked most about the box was the Iron Chef like element to it. Here's a pound of green beans, kale, and and an eggplant... Go! Annie's provided an extensive list of recipes for the produce in the box and it was fun to scour the Internet to find a recipe because all I had left was, say, carrots and kale. It actually made menu planning really easy because I had to plan around the box.

By the end of my time in Key West, though, I was starting to feel like I wanted a little more control. I discovered that I'm not a huge fan of most root vegetables (though unlike many people, I do like beets), and I learned that I have exactly zero skill with Asian cooking which means that daikon radishes and bok choy were a major cooking challenge for me. So while I did look into the CSA option when I moved to maintain that same "here's a bunch of ingredients, go!" thing, in the end I decided that I didn't want to join one, first, because I wanted more control, and second, because CSAs source from a limited geographic area (unlike Annie's which sourced globally) which limits the kinds of produce you get.

It's been kind of hard, though, to make the shift between "here's a bunch of ingredients, plan a menu" and "here's a menu, go buy a bunch of ingredients." I'm still learning how you decide what to make, because there are SO many yummy looking recipes in the world, it's hard to decide what I want without any limiting factors. So, all of you people who regularly make menus and then go shopping, how do you decide what your menu is going to look like? Where do you get your inspiration from? How do you avoid getting stuck in ruts? How do you sort through recipes?

Tangentially, here is what I'm planning to make this week (totally stole this idea from Erin):

Tropical Black Bean and Collard Green Soup

 by Fat Free Vegan

Pesto Stuffed Zucchini

by Simply Recipes

Zucchini, Corn, and Poblano Tacos

on Serious Eats

Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Charred Chile and Corn

by Serious Eats