Published on: 2024-08-28
A summary of how I spend my time
I’m a mom of a 5-year-old boy. Both me and my husband work full-time. We don’t have other family in the city that we live in to help us out. Nor do we have household help or babysitter. I am an avid reader, I read this year until now 56 books. I also do 5-6 times sport every week. I was often asked how I manage my time, and with this article I would like to share some things that I get lucky, and some things that I consciously do.
We don’t have to go to office everyday. This really saves a lot of time, not only the commute time. There are certain meetings where I’m mostly an active listener, and I always cook or do laundry during the same time. Having my hands busy, doing things that I’m so familiar with actually helps me concentrate more on the meetings.
Our son goes to kindergarten between 9 AM and 5 PM. Germany is not famous for long-opening kindergartens. We are really lucky that our son goes to a kindergarten that opens from 6 AM to 6 PM. The better part is that he has some good friends that stay with him in the kindergarten until around 5:30 PM, which is totally uncommon in Germany, where parents, especially mothers, who pick up their kids later than 4 PM, are called “Rabenmutter” (raven mother).
Our apartment is small in German terms, around 83 sqm for three people with only one bathroom. So we spend less time cleaning and tidying up. We don’t buy a lot of stuff because we know we don’t have the space. This helps reduce hours spent in household tasks.
My job is very flexible. In this sense, software engineering is perfect for people looking for work-life balance.
I don’t do anything special, just having a relationship with my husband of equal rights and responsibilites. We plan who does kindergarten duties when. We split all the household tasks.
I enjoy time with my family. During weekdays we do our best to have dinner together. On weekend my son goes to Chinese school, while we devote some time for our selves. We also visit a lot of activities for families. The key is to plan ahead.
I was never into sport. During the second year of home office due to Corona, I got slight back pain. I panicked and signed a gym membership at once. From almost no muscle I went to gaining some muscle during the one-year of going to gym. Afterwards I started doing pilates, group interval training and yoga.
Doing sport regularly helps immensely with my physical and mental health. This is the one hour in a day where I shut down my narrative circuit (see the book Your Brain at Work) and focus on the moment, on how my body feels and how I can control it.
Doing sport is an activity with high priority in my life, maybe second to my family. I always plan my sport activities, which encompass currently Beat81, pilates, yoga, and lagree at framework, one week ahead. Then I block the time on my working calendar.
My philophy to sport is heavily influenced by the book Younger Next Year, which says that you should treat sport as work. You don’t get up and think: should I go to work today? You just do it.
Getting things done is a major motivator for me at work. This helps with time management as I am result-oriented. I don’t spend a lot of time on a small task. If I couldn’t figure it out, I prefer going for a walk or explain it to a colleague. For example, I have developed a whole methodology of how to debug, which I will share in the future.
I read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcast about how to work better. One takeaway is to focus on the right thing to do. Find the thing with the biggest leverage and focus on it. It is okay to say no or let some responsiblity drop.