Today, I really want to dig into this concept of time. I find it very interesting because it is the one thing in life that we honestly can never get more of. We are told how to spend it or manage it. We know that we should never waste it or that if we want something badly enough, if we can figure out how to make time for it, but we are all given a new set of 24 hours each day and it disappears hour by hour, regardless of whether we're doing anything with it at all.
And so I want us to sort of dig into looking at this precious time that we are given each day. And especially if we believe we have ADHD or we've been diagnosed with ADHD and we struggle with something that's often been called time blindness. So this goal of ours to try and stop the procrastination and become more productive, how can we look at time in a way that it's going to be really real for us to hopefully take some action on those things that we want to use our time for.
Right after this, we'll dig in. A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid. Well, fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys. It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life.
I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four and fellow fish brain if you're looking for a place to get understanding encouragement and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks then i'm glad you're here let's ditch the type a advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique together we could have a joy loving home. The reason this whole idea of time popped up is I was recently introduced to the idea of exchanging time.
And I'm not even sure why I stumbled upon it. I wish I had somebody to link to to share this idea with you. But if you are not driving, do this little exercise with me. If you can grab a piece of paper and just something to scribble on, basically. What I'd like you to do is to make three rows of eight circles. The circles can be touching from side to side, but leave yourself a little space between each row so you can take some notes.
So what we're doing is we're doing a very rudimentary example of time logging. And every time I've heard people talk about, oh, if you will just sort of audit your time and journal your time and figure out what you're really spending your time on, you would be able to see right away, you know, where you're wasting it. And I am like, there's no way I'm ever going to remember to sit down and stop
and write what I was doing the last hour. Or if I do remember to like set a timer and go, okay, now what did I get done the last hour? I wouldn't remember anyway. So it seems futile to me. So this is a very rudimentary way to look at it. So obviously, this is 24 circles. So each circle represents an hour. And what I want you to do in that first row, this is to represent your sort of winding into sleep and out of sleep. You may sleep less than eight hours. You may sleep more than eight hours.
We're going to give ourselves some grace. This is not perfect. In my row, for example, I started the first circle with writing 11, and then I did 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So for me, this represents 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. And I'm not necessarily asleep this whole time, but it is my, I am up and getting ready for bed, and then the alarm is going back off. So it is that sort of window of time that revolves around sleep for me.
In the next row, obviously, I continue the numbers. So I have 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1, 2 in that second row. And what I did is I broke it off into two little brackets. So I did a bracket above the seven and eight, and I just put AM activities. This is the hustle and bustle of making lunches and getting breakfast and seeing people out the door or driving people off to wherever they're going, whatever those AM activities involve.
And then above my nine to two, I put kids gone. That is my particular reality. Yours may be shorter than that. yours may be longer than that but in general those are my kids gone hours and then. The final row obviously goes 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, which is the 3 p.m. To 10 p.m. And I broke that into three little bracketed sections.
So 3 to 5, I have kid activities because that is the sort of window of time in which people are being picked up or shuttled to or given a snack and then run there and then picked up from practice and made to head off to a shower, whatever. That is sort of that kid action pack activity. And then I have a bracket above six to eight that is what I am calling make, eat, and clean up dinner.
Are we always spending two hours in that activity? No. I'm getting very rudimentary set up here but what I was wanting us to do is to sort of know that that takes time even if we're driving through a drive-through that night and dinner was all of 22 minutes. It is you did that because the rest of the time around what I am calling the eating window was used for a kid activity. Either way, it accounts for what's happening in that framework.
And then I did my nine and ten as a bracket that I am calling wind down. That is usually the point in the evening when I literally just want to sit down on the couch and zone out with a good TV show or a bad TV show. I don't know. I just I don't need my brain to work anymore during those hours, but I'm not quite ready to go of bed. So again, we're just getting a little framework. And what I'm going to do just because the hard part about podcasting is not a visual medium.
So I'm going to put this photo in my free Facebook group tomorrow when I post this podcast. And if you're wanting to see what this looks like, it will be in there. And if you know nothing about my free podcast group, you can get to it by just typing bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity into your browser window and it will take you to that group. So I'll also add a link so that you don't have to remember that, but it'll be in there if anybody wants a visual.
So now that I have that, what do I do? What do I do with this knowledge that I just created in this little window? Well, this is where that exchanging of time happens. And why I found this sort of a powerful lesson is when I actually look at my 24 hours that I'm given each day in this kind of graphic, it allows me to see that for me in particular, I have six hours in which to make all the things happen that I want to do.
Those are my dreams for joy-loving home. Those are my dreams for the podcasting. Those are the times I get to work with clients. Those are the hours that I also maintain my home when the kids aren't around or when I'm not here.
Those are also the hours when I want to lean into making a call to my mom and making sure she's doing well and reach out to a friend and, you know, nurture my home and all the things, exercise my body, all of those things have to happen in what now looks like a really finite window.
And so the part that makes our brains marvel, particularly our lovely little fish brains that swirl around and swim around and feel frustrated that we're never getting anything done, is what are we doing with that time? Those six hours are happening every single day. What are we doing? And I don't need us to log everything all the time, but it allows us to say, okay, I'm doing something, doing something during that time.
So if I'm not seeing any results of the somethings I'm doing, then maybe that's the part I have to take an accounting of. And the reason this is like serendipitous to my existence right now, is our church decided for Lent to encourage a digital detox. And I don't know what that means yet. The kickoff is actually this Sunday, even though today was the first day of Lent. I'm recording this on Wednesday.
And so for those of you that participate in Lent, it's the giving up of something, you know, you know, your whole belief system around Lent. But if you don't belong to a church and you still see people are like, oh, I'm giving up chocolate, I'm giving up wine. And you're like, I don't know why, but maybe I'll jump in. It's a 40 day, quote unquote, fast of sorts where you decide what to do with that substitution of time.
So for me, and what I'm practicing until I find out what I'm really supposed to be doing on Sunday, is I decided I, from 8.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. Each day, I will not consume any short-form content. And I know this is a big loophole for myself, but believe me, this has actually already made an impact and today is day one. I'm recording this at 7.51, so I've experienced exactly 40 minutes short of a whole day of this. I have allowed myself to work on my laptop when it had anything to do with work.
I have allowed myself to watch a long-term video if it had to do with educating me. And I've been trying to figure out a tech issue I've been having. And so I was watching YouTube videos to try and figure out how to solve the problem I needed to solve. That to me was educational. It wasn't those quick 10-second, 30-second, 15-second hits. I'm only allowing myself to consume long-form information. So I'm allowing myself audiobook. I'm allowing myself podcasts.
But I'm trying to see if I can strengthen my brain to not be so bored that I feel like I need to scroll through something every 15 seconds. And it's allowing me to see how much of my life, my very precious little circles here on this page, have I been giving up in exchange to doom scroll versus to be productive. I don't know if this is something you want to jump in on. I don't know if you would like to experience this with me too.
I'm doing a whole other challenge for March with my membership group. So I'm not really digging into this with them at all. But I think I'm going to pop into the free group a couple times this month and just see if anybody else is interested. See if you're a little shocked by this exchange of time and not realizing because sitting still and doom scrolling for what's like, yeah, it's 30 seconds. It's 30 seconds. It's 30 more seconds. It's 30 more seconds.
How many times does just plopping down because you just need a transition because you can't figure out what to do next because you're frustrated at yourself because you're frustrated at what's going on already in the day, do you consume those short transform bits of social media to the tune of hours. Maybe you don't, or maybe you are and you don't realize it.
And that's sort of the whole point of saying, what am I willing to give up in order to get these things done that I really wanted to get done? And maybe I'm not even realizing. I might have looked at a goal that I had and said, I have no time to work that in. There's no way I have time for that. And then when you go, well, what am I doing in those six circles? What am I doing during that time? Is there anything in there I can carve out to exchange for this goal that actually is important to me?
So I don't want this to get too long, but I just, I don't have all the answers for this, but I do think it's going to be a worthwhile experiment. And if you want to join me it and you want to see about it and you want to talk about it more and you want somebody to do it with and you want to jump into this free group with me and just sort of explore this over the next 40 days. Let's do it. It's nice to have companionship. It's nice to have the accountability.
It's nice to have somebody to do it with. So like I said, again, it's bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity. Jump over there with us. What I will be posting is a little pink sticking out with lots of scribbly circles and brackets and words, but it's the place to start. It's the place to start having the conversation, jump in and say, hey, I'm here and I'm interested. I will digital detox with you and, you know, we can help ourselves hold accountable.
And at the end of the day, comment on how, you know, antsy you discovered you were or how much more you suddenly discovered you got done. Or, you know, I actually forced my brain to sit down and accomplish something that I would have never done because I knew it was going to take 30 minutes and my brain usually we won't focus for 30 minutes. I don't know what's going to happen. I'll do a follow-up to this particular podcast in 40 days.
And I'll try and get some anecdotes from the actual podcast group to share of what we discovered happened during our 40-day digital detox. And I'm not asking you to give it up forever, just 8.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. And then during that little window of time you want to sit on the couch and just be, if you want to scroll then, save it for then. All right, I'm going to stop here. I hope you all continue to choose joy.