When you are raising kids and working and trying to manage a household, your most precious commodity is time. Especially at this time of year, there is never enough time to do all the things we need to do. One of my challenges in life is to become more patient; people or situations who waste my time drive me to the brink. Perhaps it is my type A personality that is to blame. Just this morning, I became frustrated beyond belief when I forgot my office keys, resulting in 20 valuable minutes lost while I drove home to retrieve them and back to work again. (Note: I work less than a mile from my home. It took 20 minutes because of all the traffic in my town. Even more frustrating!)
This holiday season, in order to avoid an untimely panic attack or nervous breakdown, or worse, I am going to observe the following rules in order to not waste my own time or anyone else’s:
• Be ruthless with my schedule. If I have an appointment, say at the doctor’s office, and I am kept waiting more than 15 minutes, I am walking out. I wouldn’t do this at any other time of year, but at this time of year, I refuse to tolerate people who keep me waiting. Especially since my schedule is a tightly choreographed dance; a late appointment will throw off the whole rest of the day.
• Observe courteous email etiquette. At this time of year we receive a slew of email regarding school, sports, etc. Those of us who work are also deluged with a good 200-300 work-related emails per day, or more. I am going to do everyone else a favor and hit “reply” instead of “reply all” on all wide distribution emails… thereby avoiding clogging up my friends’ email boxes with mundane thoughts on whether I will participate in the 2nd grade teacher gift, or the recipe for the dish I am preparing for the school cocktail party.
• Shop early and shop late. If there’s one thing that makes me nuts, it’s waiting on line at the store. I am going to be shopping at odd hours this holiday season — first thing in the morning, or later in the afternoon — so that I can keep my sanity intact. I am guessing it will save me hours that I would have spent waiting for extremely well-intentioned, but busy, sales people to help me.
• Prioritize. I am going to focus solely on the things that are most important to me. Any requests that come my way that do not contribute to me being a better mom, friend, or business woman, I am going to “just say no.”
How about you? Do you have any thoughts on how we can all avoid wasting time, and get through the holidays with our sanity intact?
I love all of what you just said! AMEN sister!!
What you said is great! I go even further by not scheduling routine doctor and vet appointments in November and December. Because I am involved with my church and non-profit heavily in these months, I preplan all of my big events in October for the months of November and December as well. With all of the preplanning it makes October pretty busy but it helps keep my sanity during the Christmas season. My house is also a little less clean during this time, but the Christmas decorations tend to hide the dust pretty well.