I didn’t post last week (d’oh!) because I had a lot going on and needed to catch up on some things. Fortunately I caught back up (yay!) and things look to be more chill this week, but the experience made me think about what I cut back on when I’m busy, and how I prioritize my time.
Here’s a quick list of things I’m likely to stop doing if I’m busy so I can focus on what’s more important. The ones at the top are less important (and thus more likely to get dropped!) while the ones farther down down are things I’ll cut out more reluctantly.
Making this list has helped me understand some of the prioritizing I’ve been doing naturally, and I’m planning on keeping it as a reference to guide me through future busy weeks. As such, it might be worth making your own list of compromises for your own benefit—if you can spare the time of course ;-)
Things I Cut Back On When I’m Busy
*Drum Roll*…….and here’s the list! (For reference, last week I was so busy I was cancelling number 1 through 11!)
- Social Media: When things get busy, social media is the first thing I’ll drop: I’ll stop tweeting, stop posting on Instagram, and generally stop checking Facebook (so sorry if you’ve tagged me or sent me something on there). Social media tends to be a pretty bad time suck for me, so cutting back is a good way to stay on point.
- Emailing Friends: I have a few friends I exchange longer emails with every few weeks or months, though that period can extend up to six months or longer if I’m busy. My friends are really important to me even if I don’t see them very often, so I don’t exactly feel proud of this one, even if email is a natural place to cut back.
- Solo Hobbies : I say the “solo” part because if I’m doing something by myself, like riding my bike, playing video games, doing a jigsaw puzzle, cooking nice meals, or some other kind of hobby, I’ll almost always put it aside when things get hectic. The upside of this is that it helps me get more actual work done, but the downside is that this kind of relaxing/de-stressing time is really important, and skipping it can contribute to burnout…
- Starting New Projects: Creative projects I haven’t started yet and that don’t have a deadline generally get the axe right away so I can focus on ones that are currently open. The downside of this, unfortunately, is that it makes starting things a whole lot more difficult.
- Reading: I hate that this is so high on the list—I really do. I used to read a lot more and I feel pretty disappointed about my decrease, but when I get busy, reading’s in my top five things to fall by the wayside. (In the future, I’d really like to make this happen less often…)
- Cleaning: I also hate that this is so high on the list, but I tend to skip my bigger weekend cleans when things get rough. The upside is that doing bigger cleans less often tends to save me a lot of time, but the downside is that a dirty apartment generally leads to more micro-anxieties when I see the dirty parts, as well as being embarrassing if someone comes to visit (!).
- Creative Projects With No Deadline: I’ve been putting my new novel first recently, but other creative projects can unfortunately shift a few notches down the priority scale without my realizing it. Again, I don’t like that this is the case, so I’d really like to be making more time for them.
- Laundry: I keep a lot of spare socks, t-shirts, and underwear on hand, meaning that it takes a while for me to run out of clean clothes. That makes it easier to push laundry back for a week or so until I have more time. I consider laundry more of a relaxing activity (I tend to listen to podcasts when I hang clothes), and it doesn’t take up a ton of time, so I’ll generally keep up with it if I can.
- This Blog: Again, I hate to say this, but when things get crazy, I’ll put this blog on hold for a week or two, like I did last week. While I used to spend 2-3 hours a week on new posts, these days I devote less than an hour a week to the blog (aside from interviews!), so this doesn’t save a ton of time either. I also REALLY like taking a few minutes or an hour a week to fire off a blog post, so when I can’t take that time it can feel disappointing.
- Texting: In the past year I’ve started putting away my phone more often in general, and when I get busy, I use it even less often. As such, my text response rate can go down a lot to the point where I won’t answer even simple texts for a few days. This generally isn’t a problem, but it can throw people off, and it’s debatable how much time it really saves, since I still tend to answer everything eventually.
- Sleep: Things have to get pretty insane for me to start sacrificing more than an hour or so of sleep per night—this is because when I’m low on sleep I tend to notice an exponential decrease in my productivity and general well-being, since I’m less focused, I get more headaches, and I’ll generally crash harder when things finally slow down. Sleep rocks.
- Work on the Novel: I’ve been pretty diligent so far about keeping up my one day a week novel-drafting schedule, but if life started getting to be too much, I’d definitely take a week off.
- Cancelling Existing Commitments with Friends and Family: I hate hate HATE to be the one who cancels a get-together, so things have to be pretty insanely wild for me to knock off an actual promise I’ve made to meet someone. (Granted, when I’m busy I’ll generally schedule way fewer activities and hangouts, but I feel pretty serious about keeping ones I’ve already made.)
- Cancelling Existing Commitments for Paid/Creative Work: Again, I quadruple HATE to do this, but as an absolute last resort I’ll try to cancel or reschedule these commitments I’ve made to other people. Generally it doesn’t come to this, but sometimes you have to make a sacrifice to save the ship (or in this case, your sanity…).
Know Your Priorities For Easier Planning
It felt pretty good to write out this list—a lot of these things had been bouncing around my head for a while, so seeing them laid out in actual list form relieved me in the same way that writing out a To-Do list does. It’s also taught me more about my own priorities: for example, cancelling existing commitments of any kind ranked at the very bottom, and solo hobbies ranked near the very top, which has made me think more about how highly I value promises and commitments I make to others (which can be both a good and a bad thing…).
How about you? Where do your priorities lie, and are they different from the order I’ve laid mine out here? Let me know in the Comments, or try making your own list to see where you’re at!