Archive for ‘Productivity’ Category
Paper Doll’s Ultimate Guide to Memento Mori and Appreciating Your Time
Pardon me, handsome stranger, would you happen to know the time?
I can’t find a trace of 1988 or ’89.
If you see the daredevil ghost of my youth go racing by (woah-yeah)
Will you flag him down and let him know I’ll be running a good ways behind?
A Tall Stand of Pines, ©1998 Jeff Holmes/The Floating Men (From the album The Song of the Wind in the Pines)
If you’ll indulge me, let’s start with the inspiration for this post. Last weekend, after five years of avoiding all large groups out of an abundance of COVID caution, I did something essential for my mental health. I saw my favorite band in concert two nights in a row.
I started seeing The Floating Men perform in 1993, and went to just about every gig near me until the last time they performed in Chattanooga, in 2010. I’d also seen them in Johnson City and Nashville, TN, and most memorably, for 30th birthday (with family and friends) in Atlanta.
Their songs range from keening heartbreakers to joy-filled romps, all with complex lyrics and reflecting a louche, delightfully misspent life. I am an old, overly cautious soul, so I’ve lived a misspent youth vicariously through those songs. Seeing The Floating Men’s live made me unceasingly happy.
The Floating Men, Barrelhouse Ballroom, January 19, 2025
The bandmates’ “real” careers took them all over the country, so it had been a long time since they played together. But the fandom, The Floatilla, remains loyal. When the band scheduled one Nashville show in 2024, it sold out in moments; they added another night, and the same thing happened; and a third night. No tickets for me. But for this year, they scheduled one (and then two) shows in Chattanooga, and five years of caution gently stepped aside. Echoing Robert Frost, I can only say, “And that has made all the difference.”
In Act V, Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s Richard II, the erstwhile king bemoans that:
I wasted Time and now doth Time waste me.
King Richard II was indecisive, squandered opportunities, and was forced to relinquish his crown. Time was once a resource he could have directed, but once imprisoned, time became a force that eroded his life and meaning.
Last week, in How to Use Time Tracking to Improve Your Productivity, I wrote about time tracking as a tool for mindfully ensuring that your actions align with your goals and values. That post focused on the minutes and the hours, the nitty-gritty of our lives.
However, I keep coming back to the expression, “The days are long, but the years are short.” We “manage” our time (our days), seeking out new ways to be efficient and get specific tasks done. But fewer of us are adept at working on the bigger picture, making sure that the larger aspects of our lives intentionally arc toward meaning.
Today, we’ll look at how we perceive time and ways to elevate our appreciation of the passage of it in order to organize a life that better reflects what we want. We’ll also review tools to help us achieve a more ongoing sense of mindfulness about the passing of the days (and years) of our lives.
APPRECIATE THE SPEED OF TIME
When Daylight Saving returns, and you Google (for the seventh time) how to change the clock in your car, do you grumble that it feels like we just fell back, and now we were springing ahead? But you’ve also sat in interminably long meetings, shocked that each glance at the clock shows only a minute has passed.
What time “is” and what it feels like can be very different.
Time is a precise, but in some ways, arbitrary set of measurements for something we have never fully understood. St. Augustine believed that time actually just “sits between our ears.” There’s no actual external, objective, universal time; our measurement of time has (mostly) become culturally accepted, but it’s just by collective agreement that we measure time in 60 increments of seconds, 60 minutes, etc.
(Admittedly, the 24-hour day is fairly fixed by the Earth’s rotations, but the number of days in a year is a convention. The Jewish calendar, for example, has lunar months, 28 days each; to make up for the “extra” time, there’s an additional month in a leap year.)
For more on the history, philosophy, psychology, physics, and neuroscience of time, I recommend In Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation by Alan Burdick.
In a BBC article from September, Why Children Perceive Time Slower Than Adults, Teresa McCormack, a professor of psychology at Queen’s University in Belfast, notes that children’s comprehension of time is understudied. We know that tiny humans’ concepts of linear time are limited, and their understanding of time as a dimension (with a sense of duration) is slow to develop.
Adults, however, have both the vocabulary to mark spans of time and understanding of how time works:
- time is unidirectional and linear (outside of time travel movies)
- time is unified such that there is only one timeline (again, outside of fiction), and
- time is event-independent (meaning it’s objective, continuing while we sleep, and existing independent of human perception). Trippy!
But aside from vocabulary and complex neurology, why do kids experience time as moving quickly but it seems to pass more quickly as we age?
One simple answer, explained well on the Inverted Passions blog, is that we have a biological imperative for survival which prompts us to take note of anything that helps us make predictions regarding the future.
Investment legalese says “past performance does not guarantee future results,” but we know that things that worked for us before (or conversely, that caused awkwardness or danger) might happen again; our brains hold onto whatever helps us make predictions. But, when something novel happens, our brains stop and pay attention!
When you’re little, everything is novel. Every experience, whether the cause-and-effect of flipping a light switch or what a sneeze feels like, is new. That’s why we have granular memories of our youths through our college days, but why, other than our first days on a job or meeting our significant others, the rest of adulthood starts to blend fuzzily together.
Our adult lives are routinized; patterns repeat; life whizzes by. Yesterday is like tomorrow is like January 87th; it’s all the same. But we remember each day of our big vacations, doing new things in new places, perhaps with new people.
Predictability helps keep us alive, anthropologically-speaking, but novelty is what allows us to reflect on a life well-lived.
Predictability helps keep us alive, anthropologically-speaking, but novelty is what allows us to reflect on a life well-lived. Share on XMEMENTO MORI AND THE PASSAGE OF TIME
Are you familiar with the term memento mori? It’s Latin, meaning “Remember you must die.”
A reminder of the fleeting nature of life and our impending mortality may sound depressing, but it’s been used in literature, art, and architecture, and as a meditative practice, throughout history. None of us gets out alive, so we need to make our lives more about meaningful moments and less about to-do lists rivaling the length of CVS receipts.
Memento mori helps us realign our priorities — or at least take note when we are not living according to our stated values.
It’s worth revisiting Toxic Productivity Part 3: Get Off the To-Do List Hamster Wheel, where I wrote the following:
REVISITING FINITUDE: THE MACRO AND MICRO APPROACH
Our time on this rock is limited. A central tenet of Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals is the ability to see the shortness of life, examine your goals and values, and maximize spending your time on what matters most. This isn’t some hippy-dippy philosophy that says that if we all stop worrying about work or making money, we’ll find ourselves in a vast utopia.
Rather, it notes that life is hard, life is short, and feeling like you only have a right to be here if you’re accomplishing things that make money — whether for your company or yourself (even, or especially, if you are your company) — leads to frittering away the most valuable commodity: life.
Tim Urban’s stellar Wait But Why blog broke ground in this arena. Allowing for a little more time on the planet than Burkeman, Urban posited that we might have 90 years of life, so 4680 weeks rather than 4000.
One of his most famous posts, back in 2014, urged readers: visualize your life in years, your life in months, your life in weeks, your life in number of remaining SuperBowls…to appreciate what you do with your time.
For example, I’ve got got 2860 of my weeks behind me. It’s tempting to use these kinds of visualizations for dismay; certainly they can lead to existential angst and even more productivity dysmorphia. “See?” one might yelp! “I have even less time to make the widgets! To earn the money!” And yet, as we’ve seen over the last two weeks, that attitude just leads to focusing more on the quantifiable value you create for others; we want to look at quality, not quantity.
But, we can still turn to Urban for guidance. As a follow-up to his macro look at the finitude of life, he developed a way to organize and examine our lives at the micro level in 100 Blocks a Day.
Inspired by Urban, nomadic programmer Jama of Notion Backups, has identified a way to pause and reflect, giving perspective on where you are, chronologically speaking, in your day (rather than in your life). Rectangles.app gives you a quick glance at how much of today has gone by, in ten minute increments, as of the point in your day when you click the link. Click later in the day, more boxes turn green.
For example, when I visited and took this screenshot, I’d made it through 93 1/3 ten-minute blocks in my day.
When faced with how much of your day has passed and how much is left, you might have the following reactions:
- Yikes, I’d better get cracking! (A good motivation if you’ve been staring at social media or playing a video game for hours on end, for sure.)
- Yikes, I’ve been working and working, and I’ve only written 17 TPS reports and attended 5 hour-long meetings! (A likely sign of productivity dysmorphia creeping in around the edges.)
- Yikes, all I’ve done all day is work. I haven’t talked to anyone I love, I haven’t exercised or gotten any fresh air. I haven’t laughed. (And here’s where the magic might begin!)
If you’ve been experiencing signs of burnout due to toxic productivity, give this approach a try. Click on Rectangles and think about the day you’re having. Maybe even text the link to a friend, describe your day thus far, and get a reality check from someone who sees you more clearly.
Expanding from how much time is in a day (1440 minutes) to how much time is left in our lives, memento mori yields perspective. There are digital and analog options for helping you do just that.
ANALOG APPROACHES TO MEMENTO MORI
The Meditative Marble Method
Purchase a bag of colorful marbles and display them in an attractive glass jar. Create a ritual such that each day (or perhaps weekly, on Saturday or Sunday), you remove a marble from the jar and think about what you accomplished and gave your life meaning the last day (or week). This isn’t how many blog posts you wrote or how many new clients you signed on, but the intentional awareness of meaningful time spent with your partner, child, or friends, or special things you did to make your life a little more worthy of reflection.
Now, move the marble out of the jar to somewhere else (like an identical jar). If you planned to use this ritual weekly, you’d need to buy at least 52 marbles; daily, you’d want at least 366 (to cover leap year).
Perhaps carry that day’s marble around with you in your pocket to give you a visceral reminder all day that your time has precious value.
Perpetual Calendars
In my prior television career, I sent a lot of faxes, and that meant a lot of cover pages, and you always had a field to write the date. Unless you’re time traveling, it’s not 1997, so we’re not sending faxes much anymore. Instead, most of us check our phones or give a shout to Siri to see what the date is.
Just as digital time feels vague and unmoored from the rest of the hour, seeing just today’s date doesn’t give a sense of how today relates to the rest of the week or year.
Something more three-dimensional may help you be contemplative about the days as they pass.
See the MoMA Sliding Perpetual Calendar, designed by Giancarlo Cipri.
The Sliding Perpetual Calendar is made of plastic (so, not particularly environmentally sustainable) and measures 12 high x 9.2 wide x 0.3″ deep. You can mount it to the wall or prop it up on its included pegs. Each day, slide the red dots down the chutes-and-ladders (OK, just chutes) to select the day, month, and date. It’s currently available from MOMA for $48 ($43.20 for members).
Make the changing of the date into a device-free daily ritual and an opportunity to be mindful and intentional about the activities with which you fill your life.
Any perpetual calendar with moving pieces will work for this purpose. Other options:
Vosarea Perpetual Desk Calendar is wood, so it’s a bit better for the environment, and measures 12.8″ wide x 5.9″ high. (There’s no information on depth.) While it takes up horizontal real estate, the footprint is minimal. Amazon has it for $18.19 with a digital coupon.
ComiHome Perpetual Calendar Date Desk Calendar measures 10″ wide x 10″ high and has a sleek, modern look. This magnetometer calendar has a circular ring for the month and day of the week, a horizontal plane for displaying the date, and three magnets for selecting each, manually. It comes in red and black, or black and white and runs $22.99 at Amazon.
Deerine Wooden Block Perpetual Calendar is an upgrade the old-school block/cube calendar. It comes in pink, green, blue, black, and wood-grain, and runs $13.99 at Amazon. It measures 5.9” wide x 1.92” deep x 4” tall and is made of wood.
Journaling
It’s easy for days and then months to zip by without giving any thought to intentions beyond getting through the day. It’s like how the calendar pages flip and fly off in old black-and-white movies to let you know that significant time has passed. In old photo albums, you can gauge the passage of time by the change of hairstyles and clothing. But to percieve the changes (or lack thereof) in ourselves, a snapshot isn’t enough.
I’ll admit, I’m not skilled at journaling or adept at looking at my life as a big picture. I’m more of a to-do list person. I often write the blog posts I need to read, so I suspect that’s why I’ve been thinking about memento mori.
There are numerous apps for journaling, but I believe we’re more likely to put in emotional effort and pour out heartfelt thoughts on paper. I encourage you to try an analog journaling method if you are able. Something as simple as a One Line a Day journal for capturing the most vivid or uplifting aspects of life might be a good start.
Use Visual Time Trackers
Print or buy a copy of the grid squares from the Wait But Why post referenced above and track your life in weeks by shading the squares.
CONSIDER YOUR MORTALITY DIGITALLY
These apps are designed specifically to encourage memento mori.
Death Clock
The Death Clock app, available for iOS and Android, uses your answers to a questionnaire about your age, sex, lifestyle habits, and nation of residency to predict a death date. It’s not quite as grim as it sounds. Death Clock is AI-powered to help increase your longevity by helping users understand the impact of current habits on life expectancy and encourage making changes to live a longer, fuller life.
Their makers describe it: “It’s like having a personal grim reaper, but with health tips.” The app is free, but some features require a paid subscription.
Life: Just One
Life: Just One, created by Julien Lacroix for iOS, was inspired by the Wait But Why post. It’s designed to help users recognize that their time is precious and make the right decisions by allowing them visualize the approximate number of years, months, and days they have left on this earth.
Atypical for apps these days, it pushes no notifications, has no ads, and there’s no sign-up. It collects no life data. The basic app is free, though the Pro level unlocks widgets, a “life in weeks” section, and full customization.
WeCroak
WeCroak was inspired by a Bhutanese folk saying:
To be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily.
Each day, the WeCroak app sends five notifications to invite users to stop and contemplate death (and, by extension, the value of life).
Rather than coming at predictable times, the “invitations” arrive randomly and can arrive at any moment (“just like death,” their web site states). Upon receipt, users open the app to reveal a quote from a poet, philosopher, or notable thinker on the topic of death and may choose to pair contemplation with conscious breathing or meditation.
The WeCroak app is free to use on a variety of platforms including Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple Vision and Android.
Additionally, WeCroak has subscription-based Leap programs, providing challenges to help “face impermanence in all its aspects and live better lives today.”
Life Clock
Life Clock is a simple, platform-agnostic website. Enter your birthdate and time, and the result is a swiftly moving digital readout of your age to 12 post-decimal point places. Click the right arrow to get your age in months to ten decimal places; click again to get your age in months; click again for your age in days, hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.
You can even see your age in lunations (lunar cycles), dog years, fortnights, galactic years, kilometer light traveled, Poincaré recurrence times (a theorem which theorizes that everything that’s happening now will happen again in exactly the same way!), heartbeats, your age in Friends or Game of Thrones marathons, and more! The data isn’t deep, but offers perspective.
Related apps include 0280, Mori Master, Life Left, and Memento Mori Stoic Reminder.
Ask AI Bots to Play Jeeves
Super-techie? Let AI remind you that life is short and precious:
- Schedule Telegram to deliver daily memento mori reminder messages or affirmations.
- Learn how to make a reminder bot on Discord with dotReminder.
- Contemplate life’s impermanence with Memento Mori GPT-Reflective AI Companion
- Use a service like Replika or create custom bots.
ORGANIZE AND ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH YOUR VALUES
You know the story of the professor, the jar, the rocks and the sand, right?
Once you see your life racing by, you may be inclined to focus on the big rocks. In addition to applying all of the organizing and productivity lessons this blog shares weekly, try a strategic approach.
Audit Your Life
Identify what really matters to you. Sit quietly and write down your top 5 values: being more present in your children’s lives, leaving a professional, personal, or financial legacy, improving your health to live better longer, having more adventures, being creative, etc.
Look at your calendar and your bank account. Examine how you spend your three currencies: time, money, and attention.
Does your spending reflect your values? Are you giving time to your priorities or just whatever is loudest?
Look at how you spend your three currencies: time, money, and attention. Look at your calendar and bank account. Do they reflect your values? Share on XWrite a Personal Mission Statement
Channel your inner marketing director and figure out what you want your life legacies to be. Post your mission statement where you can see it.
Organize Your Life to Invest in Meaningful Experiences
What are your big rocks? If it’s time with loved ones, personal growth, and joy, do you have inviolable time for vacations, family dinners, or learning opportunities scheduled?
I’ve often referenced Laura Vanderkam’s book Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. Her Rule 6 encouragesus to have identify one “big adventure” (lasting perhaps half a weekend day) and one “little adventure” (lasting an hour) each week to introduce novelty.
As Vanderkam has explained, “We don’t ask where did the time go when we remember where the time went.”
What’s keeping you from scheduling adventures?
For five years, I had so few “adventures,” I can count them on one hand, twice meeting up with Nashville colleague Sara Skillen for day trips and last summer’s 1900-mile round trip road trip to see Paper Mommy and go to my college reunion. My two-night adventure of going to see The Floating Men was transformative, reminding me what I want in my life.
Revisit Your Audit Periodically
Memento mori isn’t a one-and-done proposition. Build time into your day, your week, your month, and your annual review to put more life in your life.
Memento Vivere
Author Annie Dillard said, “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”
Actress Kelly Bishop (A Chorus Line, Dirty Dancing, Gilmore Girls) wrote in The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir, “Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place.” So make sure you have them!
Memento mori (“Remember you must die”) has a sibling concept: Memento Vivere — Remember to live. Make every moment count: through mindfulness, gratitude, engagement, a sense of purpose, and celebration.
The lyrics to the song at the start of this post are a little salty for a “family” organizing blog, but I want to share my love of The Floating Men with Paper Doll readers. You can find their catalog on Spotify and Apple Music, and lots of (mostly ancient) concert video on their YouTube channel. And for the first time since 2009, they’ve got a digital EP, #Reoverimagined, with new (joyous) songs and fun bonuses, including:
Thank you, readers, for this extra-long indulgence, and thanks to Jeff, Scot, and The Floating Men for more than three decades of reminding me to (really) live!
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Jeff Holmes & Paper Doll (left); Scot Evans & Paper Doll (right) — Barrelhouse Ballroom, 1/18/25
Paper Doll Post:
How to Use Time Tracking to Improve Your Productivity
Have you ever reached the end of a day, collapsed onto your couch, and thought, “Where did the day go?”
Time is slippery like that—it vanishes into the ether when we’re stuck in meetings, running errands, or just hanging out and taking a truly shocking number of trips to the fridge.
Back in May 2020, I wrote Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 5 Strategies to Cope With Pandemic Time Dilation. That post looked at how stress and the lack of novelty in our days (such as during lockdown, when every day is much like any other, or that mystery week between Christmas and New Year’s, where nothing feels “real”) can make us lose touch with our experience of time.
Conversely, how do you feel when your schedule is jam-packed with back-to-back client meetings, or there’s no breathing room between getting the kids to school and yourself to work and then reversing course at the end of the day and taking care of everyone else’s needs and you don’t have a minute to exhale? (Did you feel out of breath getting to the end of that run-on sentence?)
When we don’t have variety — it’s the spice of life, or haven’t you heard? — or we’re overtaxed without the chance to pause and reflect, time can cease to have any meaning.
That’s where time tracking comes in: it’s like a GPS for your hours, showing you exactly where your minutes travel without you noticing. Unfortunately, the idea of logging every little thing you do can feel about as appealing as untangling a drawer full of mismatched USB charging cables. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
This past week, I’ve been participating in Laura Vanderkam’s Time Tracking challenge. (She has a free Time Makeover Guide and time-tracking spreadsheets in 15-minute and 30-minute increments, each in PDF, Excel, and Google formats.)
I’ve done Laura’s challenges each January for several years, and am always intrigued by how it impacts my productivity during the week even before I start analyzing the data. (More on that next week!)
Before we move on, I have to put in a plug for two of my favorite books Laura’s, her classic 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think and the oft-mentioned Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters.
Today, we’re going to look at the perks and pitfalls of time tracking and see how to make it work for you (without driving yourself loopy).
The Benefits of Time Tracking
If you’ve ever worked a job where your supervisor required you to report what you did with every moment of your day, you may be (understandably) disgusted with the concept of time tracking. When forced to track the minutia of your day for someone else to analyze it, you can feel judged, micromanaged, maybe even infantilized.
However, when you track your own time, it can be empowering. In fact, time tracking may reveal some surprising insights about your daily habits.
Yes, you may have scrolled your social media feed for far too many sessions for your comfort, but tracking your time might help you see that right before most of those digital mental escapes, you were dealing with cranky customers or a stress-inducing in-law, or you were sluggish post-meal.
No one moment stands on its own, so tracking your time doesn’t merely show you what you’ve done, when, and for how long, but shows the pattern of your time usage. Whether your behavior is consistent or inconsistent over time can help you dig a little deeper than knowing you worked on a blog post for 47 minutes or that you spent an hour and a half at Target.
Let’s look at some of the ways time tracking helps.
Mindfulness and Focus
By virtue of measuring something, we bring our attention to it. Without attention to how you’ve been spending your time, there’s little chance of intentionally spending in more effective and efficient ways.
If I asked you what you did last Friday afternoon, you might recall a major event you’d been working toward, unexpected occurrences (whether positive or, more likely, negative), and annoyances (whether large or small), but remember little of the granularity of your day. Time tracking helps you identify, in as granular and detailed a way as you like, how you really spend your time vs. your perceived activity and time usage.
Once you mindfully pay attention to what you’re doing (or have just done, over the last half hour) and log it, it will be easier to highlight when you’ve been inefficient (e.g., fighting with a piece of software vs. having someone help you figure out what’s wrong) or areas for improving what you do, how you do it, or when you do it, and figure out what you might want to delegate, or stop doing altogether.
But you can’t go by your gut, because your gut makes small annoyances seem larger (especially if they are repeated over time) and as though they lasted longer than they actually did.
Tracking our time allows us to measure how we deal with all manner of experiences, and that focused attention helps us better predict our future time needs.
Prioritization
It’s not only a matter of catching yourself “wasting” time, or even spending too much time on the wrong thing. Time tracking clarifies which tasks consume the most time and effort; it’s your role to analyze whether the things taking the most time represent what’s the most valuable.
Are the unimportant things taking a lot of time, leaving you few high-focus and high-energy sections of your day to focus on what’s meaningful?
Do your actions and the use of your time match your goals and values?
Do your actions and the use of your time match your goals and values? Share on XOf course, not everything that takes the most time is the most important for you to accomplish, and vice versa. Time tracking, and seeing how much time you currently put into accomplishing certain tasks, can help you distinguish between what’s “urgent” and/or “important,” as we’ve frequently discussed when reviewing the Eisenhower Decision Matrix.
Only then can you “wasted” energy toward what really matters.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Having actual numbers to back up your interpretation of what’s working (and what’s not) in your schedule is a game-changer. It will grant you actionable insights — prompts for what to do differently — to optimize your current routines and workflows.
When you time track, you’ll have a real-time account of where your time goes — towards what is:
- important and urgent
- important but requiring scheduling during your “deep work” hours
- urgent but unimportant and can be delegated, and
- what’s really so lacking in urgency and importance that it can be drop-kicked into Never-never Land.
In this way, time tracking supports goal-setting and monitoring progress over time.
Time tracking identifies how long tasks take, enabling better planning based on more realistic estimates of how long certain tasks will take to complete in the future.
Stress Busting
Oh, and those realistic estimates time tracking produces? They can reduce overwhelm* by showing you what you can reasonably do (and what you can’t) in the course of a day so that you’ll stop trying to ten pounds of sugar tasks into a five-pound sack of schedule.
If you can clearly see that you can’t get a blog post done in an hour when your kids are at home (or that trying to get it done in one long sitting will keep you from getting seven other things done), you’ll stop forcing yourself to live by unreasonable, unrealistic expectations.
In turn, this can empower you to set better boundaries (for yourself, and for others who demand or encroach on your time) and ensure you schedule breaks more effectively so that you’re doing high-focus deep work when you have high mental energy.
Accountability
A well-known saying is that what we measure gets done. If you’ve ever been in Weight Watchers, you know that they make you log everything you eat. When you know someone’s going to look at your seventeen logged mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on Thursday night, you’re more likely to put the bag back after your third nibble, and maybe lose some weight.
Similarly, while the purpose of tracking time is to get a realistic take on what you’re doing with your time, knowing that you’ll be judging your time use later may help you avoid self-soothing “time wasters” when you’re on deadline and need to stay on task.
Time tracking encourages greater tasks focus in real time. You’ll anticipate, note, and deter distractions when you’re aware of how every minute counts toward your goals. (And while you may not like the experience of judging yourself, it’s better than when your boss does it, right?)
The Challenges and Obstacles of Time Tracking
The concept of time tracking is a great one, but even great things can be problematic. We need to be realistic about how it can trip us up so we can avoid falling over Dick Van Dyke’s ottoman.
Time tracking can be a time sink. Remember that asterisk above about how time tracking can reduce overwhelm? It can, but when tracking your time feels like it’s eating into your day because you have to stop too often to note what you’re doing, you may get frustrated.
Time tracking can interrupt your flow. Some people try to track their time so contemporaneously with their actions that they can’t focus on their deep-focus or creative work.
Time tracking can be boring. There’s tedium in tracking everything. Time tracking can feel counterproductive if you’re taking time away from productive activities to note what you’re doing too many times in the course of an hour.
Time tracking may be used to procrastinate. If you don’t like what you’re doing, either at work or with your life, it’s easy to spend a lot of time fussing over color-coding or pretty fonts (or all the bells and whistles of a digital tracker) to the point where you’re not really leaving much time for the real work.
Perfectionism paralysis can be a type of procrastination. If you obsess over every detail of how you track your minutes, to the point that tracking your time causes you to stress about starting any task, very little of your actual work will get done.
Additionally, resistance to change can short-circuit your efforts in two ways.
First, for people who have mental roadblocks to starting a new habit, it can be difficult to train themselves to track their time. If you’re resistant to making the effort to track time, none of the benefits of time tracking can be reaped.
A second, more insidious problem is that the data you get — and the realization of what you’re really doing with your time (whether wasting it or giving too much time to others as a people pleaser, or just being stuck in crummy jobs or relationships) — may force an issue you’re not ready to deal with.
For time tracking to be meaningful, you have to ask yourself: are you ready to confront your inefficiencies or bad situations? And are you ready to make changes based on what you learn?
For time tracking to be meaningful, you have to ask yourself: are you ready to confront your inefficiencies or bad situations? And are you ready to make changes based on what you learn? Share on XFinally, the prospect of time tracking can trigger privacy concerns. If you’ll dillydally over selecting a digital time-tracking tool because of concerns over privacy, you have two alternatives: choose tools that respect your data boundaries or opt for analog tracking.
Make Time Tracking Work for You
So, how do you avoid those pitfalls?
Start Small
If you anticipate feeling overwhelmed by the practice of time tracking, know that you aren’t bound by any overly ambitious practice. Take baby steps.
For example, aim for a single-day experiment on a random Wednesday when you’re not anticipating major kerfuffles in your schedule.
Similarly, don’t feel like you have to start out with too granular a measurement. I generally track in 15-minute increments, but you might feel more comfortable in 30-minute slots. You’re not writing down the call you made at 1:02 p.m., 1:16 p.m., and 1:22 p.m., but rather “Made client confirmation calls” from 1-1:30 p.m. If that thirty minute slot of one category of activity yields enough information, so be it.
Once you’ve tried a one-day tracking effort, you could opt to expand, gently. For example:
- Try one tracking day per month, changing the day of the week each time. You get two chances at a “normal” Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and can either take two monthly breaks, maybe during summer vacation and December, or use some months to track weekend days to analyze how your personal time is flowing.
- Consider one time-tracking week each year. As noted, I do this as part of Laura Vanderkam’s annual January challenge, but you could do it each spring as a time management refresher, or to coincide with the fresh start of back-to-school each fall.
- Track just the time that you suspect is harboring your time gremlins and vampires. If you (and your team) are satisfied with all you accomplish during the workday, but you feel like you’re doggy paddling at home, then tracking your office tasks may not be necessary.
Pick the Right Tools for You
When I track my time, I do a week at a time on an Excel spreadsheet with columns for each day of the week and rows for each quarter hour, which I keep open but minimized on my screen.
You could use a pre-made tracker or create one for yourself. Or go really low-tech and draw or write out your daily blocks of time from waking to bedtime on a sheet of notebook paper or graph paper — or just track your work hours. (But remember, if you do decide to color-code or make it fancy, do that during your planned recreation time time and not during the period you should be doing the logged, tracked work!)
Alternatively, there are numerous digital time tracking software programs and apps, including:
- Rescue Time — This is the grand-daddy of time tracking software; I wrote about it seventeen years ago, when I first started blogging. Rescue Time will automatically track all of your computer-based work and then provide reports on your time trends. Rescue Time has solo and team plans, all paid (after a 14-day free trial).
- Toggl Track — This veteran platform offers free (for up to five users) automated time tracking, making it ideal for solopreneurs and freelancers, with paid versions for teams. It’s accessible from anywhere via computers or mobile devices.
- Timeular — If you want completely seamless time tracking that’s operating system-agnostic (it works on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web, Linux) and an offline tracking option, Timeular may be for you. However, note that it’s paid-only (after a 30-day free trial). Timeular also has an AI tracker and a cool physical tracker (an eight-sided doohickey where you can assign and link facets of the doohickey to categories of work you do).
- Clockify — This time tracking software has plans ranging from free, basic, and standard, to pro and enterprise levels, with increasing variety of features. It’s more basic than Toggl Track, but also feels a bit easier to learn. Even the free level has unlimited tracking, reports, projects, and users.
- Harvest — This offers free, pro, and premium plans and is designed for freelancers. It’s available for all major operating systems (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web, as well as browser extensions). While it’s simple to learn and has myriad integrations with other software programs, the free plan is fairly limited. (If you’re just starting to explore time tracking, though, simple is better!)
- Memtime — This has a pretty minimalist interface, so the simplified, automatic time tracking makes it super-easy to use. However, it’s only available for desktop use (so, no mobile tracking) and it’s a paid-only platform (after a 14-day free trial), so it wouldn’t be your best option for first-effort time tracking. Above the basic level, it offers a wide variety of software integrations. Note that Memtime claims, “We’re the only automatic time tracker that guarantees privacy by keeping your activity data offline.”
If you want something less corporate and more minimalist and mindful in a time tracker, you might want to look at Hourlytics (iOS-only) or Balance (MacOS-only). If everything you need to track is computer based, Monitup has an AI-based tracker, but if you’re cool logging everything on the phone, HoursTracker® Time Tracker works on iOS and Android.
Only you know what kind of tracking system — analog, basic spreadsheet, or digital app — will keep you committed to the experience.
Think Patterns, Not Perfection
It’s easy to note one-off times where you went down a rabbit hole on a particular research project or social media thread, but don’t beat yourself up over less-than-ideal time use.
Punishment isn’t the point! Instead, remember that one purpose of time tracking is investigating what doesn’t work so you can find what does.
Because of this, focus on trends. Are you always in a slump after lunch, distracting you from high-focus mental tasks? Maybe you need to schedule more physical tasks until you work off that post-lunch sluggishness, or try tasks that take less brain power.
Set Goals, Then Support Them
Your time tracking efforts will yield a wealth of information about what you’re doing that barely registers in your mind as a “task” (like picking up after your kids or straightening the company supply closet because everyone else leaves it a mess). You’ll see what’s taking too much time, what should be scheduled at different times (or delegated or given up on altogether), and where you have opportunities to do more things or do the same things differently.
Use what you learn from time tracking to help you set your goals; think: what gives you joy or feeds your values? Then schedule supporting efforts in a way to improve your productivity on the things that matter the most to you, whether it’s for money-generating work or happiness-generating life.
The Big Picture
I get why time tracking has a bad rap. If you ever had a bad boss like Gary Cole’s passive-aggressive Bill Lumberg from Office Space, you probably only remember the nasty edge of being asked to track your time.
We should reframe time tracking as a positive, empowering practice, just like practicing mindfulness, gratitude, yoga, or anything that benefits personal development. If we choose to see time tracking’s value as a learning tool about ourselves, rather than a rigid system leading to pejorative judgment, we can reap some pretty impressive benefits.
Time tracking doesn’t need to be done 24/7/365. And tracking your time without reflecting on what your data tells you is going to have fairly limited results. But periodic time tracking, with reflection and review of that data, will help you refine your routines so your schedule of what you do and when you do it can guarantee more wins. Just remember to:
- Find balance — Be just comprehensive enough in your tracking to yield good, meaningful data, but not so much that it becomes a source of stress or uses too much of your time. Make your system flexible.
- Embrace the unexpected — Be openminded about what you find. Even the act of tracking less-productive moments (hello, social media!) can teach you something about yourself and your needs — variety in your workflow, downtime, or maybe even for a different job or relationship that builds you up instead of draining your energy and causing you to self-soothe to inefficient levels.
Time tracking is your personal productivity GPS. Use it to help you read the map of your life, identify where you are, and travel the best possible path to your preferred destination.
Today’s post was about the literal passage of time — being mindful what we are doing with it — so that we can be more productive and self-aware.
But as I noted at the start, time is slippery. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “The days are long, but the years are short.” We spend a lot of time rushing to accomplish tasks, mostly for others but sometimes for ourselves, but our awareness of time (and the passage of it), both on a daily basis and as the infrastructure of our lives, can be murky.
Next week, we’re going to look at how we can do more to appreciate the speed of the passage of time to organize a life that better reflects what we want. I’ll also share tools to help us stay mindfully aware of the passing of our moments, our days, and our years.
Do you track your time? Share in the comments!
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your Way Out of the Winter Doldrums
Sigh. the musical Annie may be right that “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow,” but the sun never came out yesterday.
Granted, it was a rainy day, but in addition to the dark, dreariness of the day, and the too-swift passing of a December Sunday, the sun went down without my noticing because it really never seemed to come up. As I may have alluded to in Organize Your Sleep When the Clocks Change and Beyond, I’m not much of a fan of Standard Time. I like lots of sunshine, and particularly want long, light evenings to run errands and move about in the world.
We’re in a darker, gloomier time of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere. That, combined with the wonkiness of the end of the year, makes this a weird time. Some folks are delighting in preparing for the holidays, getting ready to entertain and celebrate, but over and over, I’m hearing from friends and clients alike that they aren’t quite “feeling it,” or at least not yet.
A few people have asked, having jokingly, if there are ways to organize yourself out of feeling out of sorts at the end of the year. I think there are.
This is the final “normal” week of the year. Next week is Christmas and the start of Hanukkah, and the week after, is New Year’s. While many folks are (or will be) with family and celebrating, there are many who are feeling a walking-through-molasses sluggishness at this time of year. Half their co-workers are out of the office, and while some clients are expecting attention, there’s a widespread, tacit understanding that nobody is starting anything new for the next 2 1/2 weeks.
So, if you’re in your annual happy place, please feel free to skip this week’s post. But if you’re grumbling about the dark and the cold, about another year over and about the “meh” of it all, I have some suggestions.
COPING WITH THE “BASEMENT WEEKS” OF THE YEAR
These weeks aren’t just the bottom of the year. They can feel dark, cold, even soggy. There’s a hurry-up feeling just before the holidays and, for most, a drop-off in delight between the holidays and again at the start of the year.
But winter really can be the most wonderful time of the year if you have the right mindset, according Kari Leibowitz, PhD., a Stanford-trained psychologist. She’s written a book on how to improve mental health by changing how you think about the winter months.
Leibowitz moved to Tromsø, Norway, above the Arctic Circle, to live for a year. For two entire months, the sun doesn’t rise in Tromsø! You’d think everyone there would be crabby and stabby during that time, but she found that the community approached the season with a chipper mentality. She similarly explored places on earth with “some of the coldest, darkest, longest and most intense winters, and discovered the power of “wintertime mindset”— viewing the season as full of opportunity and wonder.”
To help those of us (who can at least feel grateful that we’re not above the Arctic Circle) starting to struggle with finding inspiration this time of year, Leibowitz wrote How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days.
Get Psyched for Winter
Liebowitz says that changing our mindsets about winter is key. Apparently, we tend to psych ourselves out, adopting a mindset that assumes that winter will be grim, so it feels that way. I get it. As a professional organizer, I’ve seen how often people expect that organizing will be boring and that they’ll be grumpy, so when they do it on their own, it is. They’re surprised when a professional organizer comes in and treats the experience as hopeful and (dare I say it?) entertaining?
As an organizer, I approach working with a new client, or even a new session, by focusing on the possibilities of finding delight. I see myself, in partnership with a client, as an explorer, a detective, an anthropologist, and more. Because I expect fun, I will (generally) find it (and get to share it with the client).
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, and interpret, new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories. If you expect winter to be misery-inducing, you’ll find signs of it everywhere.
Easier said that done? Maybe not. Instead of seeing winter as two potentially fun (but possibly disappointing) weeks followed by months of darkness, we can look for ways to see winter, as a whole, as fun.
Create a Winter Wonderland in Your Space
I’m sure you’ve heard about hygge. A few years ago, books about hygge, the Danish approach to winter coziness, was all the rage. (If you need an introduction, The New Yorker‘s 2016 piece, The Year of Hygge, the Danish Obsession with Getting Cozy, is a great place to start.)
Western articles about hygge tend to focus on the physical atmosphere. Every single piece will reference candles. The Danes are very big on candles being comforting. Personally, I worry about candles getting knocked over. If you have pets and tiny humans, consider safe alternatives to lit candles, like fairly lights or tiny, flickering LED tea lights.
If you have a fireplace and don’t have to worry about kids or creatures in close proximity, consider making a ritual out of lighting a nightly fire to increase the cozy atmosphere.
There’s no official hygge-ness to it, but I think it’s wise to create a winter beverage station. Think about the coffee stations you see in bed & breakfast venues and boutique hotel lobbies. Consider investing in a cute tray and a variety of teas, coffees, mulled ciders, and hot chocolates. Buy a few tiny bottles of flavoring syrups, or fill a glass canister with mini-marshmallows. Whether you’re working from home or recovering from exposure to a snowy day, your daily beverage experience can be a ritual for emotional, as well as physical, warmth.
If you’re up for some “scentsational” improvements, extend the scents of the holiday season and use essential oils like cinnamon, pine, or citrus. (Generally, I prefer unscented products, but am obsessed with buying citrus-scented foaming hand soaps. Even before COVID, I was in the habit of washing my hands as soon as I came in from the outside world — you never know what supermarket shelf had germs! — and those citrusy, foamy bubbles and warm water are a great transition when you first come in out of the cold.)
Increase comfort in various places in your house. Plush blankets are soft, warm, and nurturing. The weather outside may be frightful, but you can feel snuggly the whole day (and night) long.
Fellow GenXers may recall how cozy it was to wear leg-warmers in the 1980s, both inside and outside. You might think leg-warmers disappeared when Jane Fonda workout videos did, but they’re still available in a variety of styles and colors.
It’s not necessarily hygge to use them this way, but on a day where you need a lift, dance around your house to a TikTok video and pretend you’re an extra in an episode of Fame.
Organize Your Winter to Embrace Hygge Attitudes
In addition to the physical comforts that can improve your mood in the winter, there are hygge-related attitudes (irrespective of holidays) that can give you some uplift when you’re struggling against the (literal or figurative) darkness.
- Be present — It’s so easy to get caught up in the news and crummy things happening halfway around the world or just elsewhere near you, but miss the small treasures in your own life. Be present in the moment by stepping back from technology. For more reasons and inspiration, read my post, Celebrate the Global Day of Unplugging.
- Add pleasure rituals to each day — You can counteract the glumness of winter by adding little treats to your day (and to the days of everyone around you). Call a friend to come over and hang out while you bake cookies. Of course, winter treats don’t have to be caloric. Come home after a work day to glory in a bubble bath. Try skincare rituals that may have seemed like silly luxuries before, like a face- or full-body sheet mask.
- Create a cadence to the week with personal and social rituals — Rituals added to the ebb and flow of your week can make the winter pass more quickly. For the next few months, try having a standing date with friends, whether it’s a low-effort Sunday dinner (rotating houses), board-game afternoon, or a movie night. Consider pancake/waffle breakfasts on Saturday with the kids and experiment with different types recipes or shapes. The key is that you don’t have to go out in the winter weather (though you could) to have something to look forward to each week that’s not a big production, but that will lift your spirits.
- Practice gratitude — Hey, at least you don’t live above the Arctic Circle. At least we don’t live in horse and buggy days and have to get our drinking/cleaning/bathing water from the river. At least there’s Zoom and Door Dash and electricity. Be thankful for small mercies, for loving friends, or for whatever you don’t have that you don’t want. Journal, write gratitude lists, or write notes to the people to and for whom you are grateful! Imagine how getting such a note could brighten their winter days!
- Volunteer — If you’re having trouble even feeling grateful, consider volunteering with a local charity, at a shelter (for unhoused persons, for victims of domestic violence, for animals looking for their forever homes, etc.).
- Practice mindfulness — The Polish website Prze Kroj’s Mindfulness Exercises for a Cold Day provides a variety of approaches to reframing the thoughts we have about the stagnation of these dark days (“Oh, no, another year is ending and I still haven’t written my novel!”) and offers ideas for positive reinforcement and self-awareness.
Behave “As If” and Upgrade Your Winter Activities
I will never ski. I ice skate maybe once every fifteen years. You know how some people are “at one” with nature? I am at two with nature.
But Leibowitz found that the folks of Tromsø found ways to spend their winters living more closely in sync with nature, adapting to the seasons by giving in and taking cues from our animal friends. Perhaps we need not hibernate, but that hygge coziness (resting more, slowing down) apparently blends nicely in concert with Thumper and Bambi (playing outside).
So, following Leibowitz’s advice that we act as if we were outdoorsy folks, we could:
- Take an energizing walk when the sun is out. (You may recall from the Organize Your Sleep When the Clocks Change and Beyond that getting daylight helps reset the body clock so our insides know that it’s time to go night-night.)
- If you’re not me, try a winter sport or activity that’s less about competition and more about having fun: ice skating, sledding, skiing (downhill or cross-country), snowshoeing, tubing, tobogganing. etc.
- You don’t have to be athletic. You and the neighbor kids (or the cute neighbor guy, if your life imitates a Hallmark movie) can make a snowman or build a snow fort.
Love and Other Indoor Sports
Of course, you don’t have to go outside. Leibowitz recommends the dark winter months are ideal for engaging in “low-arousal positive activities,” — activities that give us a warm glow rather than ruddy faces and iced-lung wheezes.
If you’d like to explore an activity that makes the winter brighter or cozier but without having to put on your shoes, winter is a great time to organize your hobby exposure.
- Take up a craft or hobby. Give yourself permission to be terrible at knitting or painting. Nobody needs to know.
- Explore an online class (live or recorded) to learn how to do something (cook, take better photographs, do those viral social media dances) or just to know something (about the Holy Roman Empire, or what are the other parts of a cell, because all you remember is that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, and there must be more to it).
- Take up an indoor physical activity. Every January, people sign up for gym memberships as part of New Year’s resolutions. They go a few times and their motivation peters out. Don’t let winter beat you up or guilt you out. Try an online exercise class. There’s a reason why Yoga with Adriene is a perennial favorite, even with those of us with wonky balance and no flexibility. Adriene and her doggie offer a comforting yoga practice, and you don’t have to switch out of your jammies and into Spandex. (Though you might want to try out the aforementioned leg-warmers!)
Conversely, go the reverse route. Instead of trying something new, reinvigorate yourself with the love of something old.
From my late twenties and through my thirties (and beyond), I had a favorite regional band, The Floating Men. They weren’t MTV-famous, but I attended their small- and medium-sized venue concerts in various cities where I lived (or traveled to) and always felt immense joy as we all (The Floatilla) sang along and danced with revelry.
The band stopped playing gigs as their grownup careers got in the way, but last year, they announced they were going to start performing again. There wouldn’t be shows every few weeks, but there would be a show in Nashville and I was jazzed! But it sold out in moments. They added a second show. It sold out right away again. I shrugged and figured I’d just comfort myself with the CDs that have sustained me for decades.
I was surprised and delighted when they announced a show here in Chattanooga, and I managed to get tickets; that show, too, had sold out quickly and a second night was added, and as frugal as I am, I arranged to go to that show, too. I’ve been listening to the band’s music for a long time, but in the months since I bought the ticket, I listen much more often, singing out loud and dancing around the house. I’m remembering the concerts, but also the joy of hearing the music for the first time, or introducing it to others. Sometimes, recalling old loves can kindle new sparks.
What old loves can you bring back into your life? (No, don’t call your ex.)
- Re-read books that brings you joy or comfort — I re-read all the Jane Austen novels almost every year. (This winter, I’m considering a movie marathon over weeks, watching every movie based on an Austen novel.)
- Listen to music from your youth — Listen to your tangible music formats or go to Spotify, but pretend it’s your senior year of high school or college and play what thrilled you back then. If it’s Squeeze’s Singles – 45’s and Under, let me know in the comments and we can sing Tempted together over Zoom.
- Re-binge your favorite shows from way back — Chances are good that there are shows you loved back before there were DVRs (or even VCRs). Watch them again, and maybe share the love with a partner, friend, or kid who never experienced the show the first time through. (I’m ready for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch.)
- Listen to podcasts that review the stuff you loved — I’m a sucker for podcasts where fans talk about TV shows, but also where actors talk about the shows they were in, and each show focuses on one episode. I loved The West Wing Weekly when there was a new episode every week, and my plan is to start listening to I Am All In, Scott (Luke Danes) Patterson’s Gilmore Girls podcast.
And as long as I’m talking about Gilmore Girls, have you seen the new Walmart commercial with the cast?
Unlike some of the rest of us, Lorelai loves winter. If you’re a fan, you know how happy she gets when she can smell snow.
The point of all of this is that you can use the darkness of winter as permission to slow down, rest, and rebuild for a coming spring. Soon enough, we’ll be talking about all you want to accomplish for the new year. Until then, maybe reinvigorate yourself gently?
A PERSPECTIVE TO HELP YOURSELF LET GO
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your Sleep When the Clocks Change and Beyond
Are you feeling wonky? If you live in North America, you turned your clocks back (or let all your digital ones do it themselves) over the weekend. (If you live in the UK, you did it a week ago. I don’t know what’s up with that, but you may still be feeling wonky.)
Although most of the negative effects of time change happen when we are springing forward to begin Daylight Saving Time, falling back to end it can still leave people struggling to wake up and feeling out of sorts for a few days, leading to some bumps in productivity.
So, if you’re feeling a little rough, don’t worry. Today’s post offers some gentle tips for feeling a little more at ease when the time on the clock and the time inside your head don’t feel friendly toward one another.
HELP YOUR BODY ADJUST TO THE TIME CHANGE
Whether you’re dealing with the time change in the spring or fall, the best way to adjust is always to shift your schedule gradually.
Unless you’re the kind of person who misses all the reminders about the clock change and shows up an hour late (or early) to Sunday brunch, or worse, for work on Monday, you have advanced warning. When the time change is on the horizon, adjust your bedtime and waking time by ten or fifteen minutes each night for several days prior. (Make a note on your calendar to start this at the beginning of March; Daylight Saving Time starts on March 9, 2025! I’m already counting down.)
This kind of incremental approach is supposed to give your body the time to adapt. Of course, we’ve just changed the clocks, so that option is out. Still, consider the following steps for helping your body adapt to the time shift. You’ll find that these steps are generally the same ones for attaining recuperative sleep, overall.
Be the Early Bird and Get Morning Sunlight Exposure
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m terrible at mornings. I’d happily take a flight or attend a Zoom at 3 a.m. before going to sleep, but I’d be hopeless doing the same things at 7 a.m. Early morning sunlight makes me growl. However, my science-y pals swear that natural light will help reset our internal clocks.
The research on circadian rhythms says that cycles of sunlight and nighttime darkness keep our bodies synchronized with our environment and signal our “circadian pacemakers.” This pacemaker is particularly sensitive to light in the morning and the evening, so evening light (such as we have all summer) causes a phase delay, so we don’t get tired until later and then we wake up later. Conversely, when we are exposed to bright sunlight in the morning, it causes a “phase advance,” and we start getting sleepy earlier and awaken earlier.
Sunrise Coffee Photo by Taryn Elliott
So, exposure to sunlight signals your body that it’s time to wake up; just some light permeating through your eyelids will have some kid of wakey-wakey-eggs-and-bacon-y effect. So, actually spending twenty minutes outside in the morning will help you feel less sluggish.
If the temperature allows it, take your breakfast out onto your back patio or balcony; you can enjoy your morning coffee on your front step, but if you amble out in your jammies, at least make sure you’re properly covered up as the school bus goes by.
Improve and Optimize Your Sleep Environment
We hear it all the time: it’s important to set a consistent sleep routine.
If you’ve been living the life of a college student (or a new parent) and are all out of whack (and this has been compounded by the end of Daylight Saving Time), be patient with yourself. Know that your body will need time to adjust to whatever changes you make, but sticking to a regular bedtime and wake-up schedule (sigh, even on weekends) will improve your odds of getting better quality sleep and more of it.
Research shows that your sleep experience will improve if you consistently do the following:
- Keep your bedroom dark. Close your blinds or curtains. If you have old-style horizontal Venetian blinds, you may find they let in too much light. If so, try twisting them “backward” such that the curved portion faces outward. Alternatives are the more modern, wider, vertical blinds or roller shades in darker colors.
Another great option is a blackout curtain, which is designed to eliminate as much natural light as possible. Note that the longer the curtain extends from the bottom of the window toward the floor, the less light will seep out.
If there’s a curtain gap (which always seems to happen when you’re staying in a hotel), try pinching the curtains together with clothespins or the clips of a skirt hanger.
Admittedly, if you block out all natural light, you won’t be awakened by the brightness and warmth of the sun. This increases both the importance of getting into the sunlight once you DO wake up and also necessitates a less natural method for shaking yourself out of slumber. For the latter, check out Do (Not) Be Alarmed: Paper Doll’s Wake-Up Advice for Productivity for tips on heeding that wakeup call.
Don’t forget about tiny unnatural lights. So many digital devices blink or glow. My smoke alarm has a blinking green light. Routers and DVRs and all sorts of devices have blueish glows.
In my bedroom, I have an old-fashioned Caller ID box (connected to an old-school, weighty corded landline). It blinks. Incessantly. Every time I have a message, the red light starts blinking again. Listening to the voicemail message and deleting it has no impact; I must manually clear the Caller ID box. (Sigh. It’s a tradeoff. I love the large handset of this ancient phone, but it has no caller ID. The box serves its purpose of letting me know if the inbound call is from a delightful soul or yet another robocall about my auto warranty. But that red blinking light!)
If you’ve got bright or blinking LED lights on gadgets in your sleeping area (either at home or when traveling), consider getting a sheet of removable, adhesive blackout stickers to stem the indoor light pollution.
In addition to adjusting your lighting while you’re sleeping, train your body to sense the cycle of day and night by dimming your household lights as bedtime approaches. Experts say that lowering the lights helps signal your body that it’s time to wind down. Think about how you can gradually reduce your exposure to artificial lighting in the evening (without risking bumping into the furniture).
- Create a quiet environment. Quiet doesn’t necessarily mean silent. I prefer a combination of white noise: my central HVAC fan is turned to on (instead of auto, so I’m not constantly jarred by that thunk of it turning off) and my Rain, Rain thunderstorm app as I described in 11 Ways To Organize Your Focus With Ambient Noise. (Sometimes, what you want to focus on most is being blissfully unconscious.)
“Quiet” doesn’t only include your sleeping space, but also your mental space. Limit cognitively or emotionally intense activities before bed. Have you ever played a video game before bedtime and then found that your brain continues playing the moves in your head when you close your eyes? If you’ve spent hours reviewing a spreadsheet pre-jammy time, you might see those columns and rows and be unable to turn off your in-brain Excel.
For a few hours before bed, limit any activities that are emotionally stressful or require a high level of concentration. The goal is to avoid keeping your mind too active before bed, as that will make it harder to find your personal Sandman.
- Maintain some chill. The experts estimate that the best temperature for sleeping is between 60° and 67°F. Obviously, if you’re shivering, it’s going to keep you awake, but experiment lowering the ambient temperature combined with your preferred number of blankets. If you’re a “hot sleeper” or are at a period in your life when you’re experiencing hot flashes — let’s call them power surges — consider cooling pillows and bedding.
- Keep your bedroom organized. Yes, your eyes are closed once you’re asleep, but a cluttered room presents a few obstacles to falling asleep easily, or falling back asleep after a trip to the bathroom or to check on a tiny human.
I teach my clients that “the bedroom is for sleep, rest, and intimacy.” If your bed, nightstand, and floor are covered with children’s toys, you will be distracted from all three of those purposes, and you’re more likely to step on a piece of LEGO and wail in pain, keeping you from falling back asleep and your partner from sleeping soundly.
The bedroom is for sleep, rest, and intimacy. If your bed, nightstand, and floor are covered with children's toys or office work, you will be distracted from all three purposes. Share on XIf your computer is open next to your bed, or your work desk lives in the bedroom, or your credit card bills are piled near where you sleep, the chance of disturbed sleep is higher because those items will subconsciously cue your brain to fret over them when you’re trying to fall asleep.
Declutter your bedroom so that the floor around your bed is free of tripping hazards, and so the only things visible are those that are functional or soothing. I know, it’s easier said than done, but even taking a few moments to tidy your space (and training yourself and others not to bring non-bedroom-y things into your room in the first place) will have a positive effect.
Don’t be Blue!
As we talked about in Celebrate the Global Day of Unplugging, screens (computer, phone, tablet, or TV) and particularly the blue lights of screens from your devices, can interfere with your body’s ability to produce melatonin.
Find alternatives to screens in the bedroom, and consider different pre-sleep habits that don’t involve screens. You could journal, read a tangible book, do simple stretches while listening to soothing music, memorize a poem, or practice an uncomplicated craft. Define “uncomplicated” as you choose, but needlework that doesn’t require bright task lighting is going to be better than a craft that involves scissors, glue, and (eek!) glitter.
Don’t Do the Dew — and Limit the Moonshine, Too!
You may not think that one more fizzy beverage or cup of coffee will make a big deal, but a 12-ounce cup of Mountain Dew contains around 54 milligrams of caffeine. (An eight-ounce cup of coffee has 95 milligrams of caffeine!)
Caffeine can stay in your system for hours and have a detrimental effect on your sleep, so experts suggest avoiding it after mid-afternoon. (Yeah, I know this one is a toughie. What’s a diet Coke without the oomph of caffeine?) Remember, the goal is to relax your body so that you’ll sleep well and have natural energy for work or school the next day.
The experts similarly encourage people to limit drinking alcohol in the pre-sleep hours. One might aassume alcohol encourages relaxation, but it actually disrupts the sleep cycle, making sleep less restorative. For those who choose to imbibe, know that doing so earlier in the evening will minimize the negative impact on sleep.
Watch Out for Midnight Snacks
Experts encourage us to avoid heavy meals or snacks in the late evening. Larger meals closer to bedtime can take longer to digest and disrupt sleep.
However, if you’re hungry, that may also make it hard to fall asleep. Personally, I find that a small protein-packed snack and a tiny bit of carbs (like a handful of almonds or a few cheese and crackers stacks) helps my body find dreamland. Experiment to find what works for you.
Watch Your Daytime Habits
We tend to think of our pre-bed activities as the key to falling asleep, but getting our full eight (or more) hours requires a bevy of other self-care habits.
- Participate in an active lifestyle — This doesn’t mean you have to train for the Olympics or spend every day at the gym. But physical activity helps you sleep better.
Consider a yoga, tai chi, or qigong regimen in the evenings as shown in the following videos, or go for an early morning walk (with the bonus of getting morning sunlight).
Bedtime Yoga with Adrienne
5 Minute Tai Chi Flow for a Restful Night’s Sleep
Qigong for Sleep with Nick Loffree
If you are already active, just remember to avoid vigorous exercise close to bedtime, as it can be too stimulating, making it harder to fall sleep.
- Learn how to relax — It’s hard to conk out when our brains are focused on what’s stressing us out. However, even when we’ve cut down our mental focus on stressors, our bodies tattle on us. We hold stress in our muscles and joints.
In addition to practicing the physical relaxation techniques described in the above videos, find ways to mentally relax as you approach bedtime. Maybe you’re good at meditating — I’m not — but there are so many other options, too. Learn deep breathing exercises, journal, or take a warm bath before heading to bed. Do whatever you can, both throughout the day and as sleepy time approaches, to progressively relax your mind as well as your body.
- Hydrate throughout the day — We live in a hydration nation. Everyone seems to have a giant water bottle named Stanley. Being well-hydrated prevents fatigue, which helps maintain overall energy levels so you can avoid late-day napping, stay active, and adapt not just to the time change but to unexpected changes in your schedule.
An Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) report, The Cognitive Effects of Proper Hydration, spells out the key benefits of staying hydrated, including improved focus and short-term encoding of memories, better long-term memory recall, and improved critical thinking skills.
Additionally, research shows that “low water consumption tends to lead to worse moods, as well as headaches, confusion, and tiredness” and better hydration makes people feel calmer and in better moods. The steadier your mood, the more likely you’ll be relaxed enough to sleep well at night.
However, slow your hydration pace as you approach bedtime so you can minimize disruptions to your sleep. (If you wake up for a bathroom break, you’ll almost certainly never get back to that steamy dream with Jason Momoa.)
Don’t stop hydrating altogether, though. Our brain tissues have no way of storing water, and our waking brains need some hydration at least every two hours to function optimally. Drink water upon awakening to help you start your day.
- Watch out for naps — If you’ve had a rough night, a nap can help you recover, but keep it brief, to no more than 20 to 30 minutes.
Additionally, avoid napping late in the day (so, no pre-dinner snoozing), as it can interfere with your ability to fall and stay asleep at night. (If you’re feeling draggy, try drinking some cold water to pep you up!)
Instead, trying following one of the international approaches to early afternoon napping and recuperative resting that I outlined in Take a Break for Productivity — The International Perspective.
Additionally, the Mayo Clinic has some good advice for taking naps effectively in Napping: Do’s and Don’ts for Healthy Adults, and the book Take a Nap! Change Your Life. purports to change the reputation of naps for the better and help people improve their health through the right methods of napping. (You could always listen to the audiobook; worst case scenario, it’ll put you to sleep!)
Make Waking Up in the Morning More Appealing
For some of us, no matter how hard it is to fall asleep, we can’t bear to get out of our cozy beds. Consider organizing your resources so that whatever you have to face in the morning is desirable. Here are a few ideas:
- A pleasant alarm — that seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? — that gently wakes you, or one set to a radio station that will make you laugh or want to sing is a great way to nudge you from sleeping to wakefulness.
- A cozy bathrobe or dressing gown helps ease the shock of moving from your comfy bed to a house set more for cooler sleeping temperatures than warm wakey-uppies.
- A new shower head — TikTok kept tempting me and I finally gave in and bought one of those new filtered, hand-held shower heads. (It’s even got a doohickey so you can use it like a garden hose to clean the shower.) Whether you want a shower massage or a rainforest effect, upgrading your morning shower routine gives you something to look forward to. You may not jump out of bed, but perhaps you won’t grumble so much.
- A breakfast fit for Sleeping Beauty — In the ideal world, Jeeves would serve breakfast in bed. Failing that, aim for some special food or beverage treats, to make the morning meal inviting for the senses.
- Start a new morning routine — If you don’t have enough of an opportunity to read, put a good book by your breakfast setting and instead of doom-scrolling social media. Take a brisk ten-minute walk around the block instead of checking morning emails. Call your BFF (but only if she’s likely to be awake already) and develop your plans to take over the world.
Organizing your morning to do just a few things differently could yield all sorts of bonuses as the day goes on.
Organizing your morning to do just a few things differently could yield all sorts of bonuses as the day goes on. Share on XTake Your Sleep Health Seriously
If you have more than occasional trouble falling or staying asleep, don’t take things into your own hands.
- Don’t self-medicate. We already discussed how alcohol disrupts sleep patterns, but it’s common for frustrated sleepers to seek out other (problematic) ways to self-medicate via over-the-counter options.
Even the commonly suggested solution of melatonin supplements are not suitable for everyone. For example, melatonin can lower blood sugar, causing hypoglycemia in people with diabetes; it’s also contraindicated for people taking blood pressure medications, blood thinners, certain contraceptives, and anti-convulsant medications. (People who are pregnant or breastfeeding, or who have autoimmune or seizure disorders or clinical depression should also not take melatonin.)
- Talk to a medical professional. Paper Doll is a professional organizer, not a sleep doctor (and I don’t play one on television). If you consistently have trouble falling or staying asleep, confer with your healthcare provider to make sure you don’t have an underlying medical condition (like sleep apnea) contributing to your difficulties. If you do learn that you have a sleep disorder, you may also want to find a sleep specialist through one of the following
American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM)
American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine (AADSM)
Your ability to be productive and organized in the daytime depends in large part of you successfully organizing your sleep at night. Sleep well!
WHEN WILL WE BE RID THIS INFERNAL CHANGING OF THE CLOCKS?
Your phone and computer likely change their own clocks. Your oven and microwave clocks likely do not. The clocks on my cordless landlines are triggered to change when receive an inbound call! I have a relatively glucometer (for testing blood sugar) and spent Sunday morning struggling with a multi-panel instruction sheet that made me feel like I was trying to fold a 1950s Rand McNally street map! There’s a reason so many people’s VCRs used to blink 12:00 all the time.
It’s not difficult. It’s just a little frustrating. We’re a quarter of the way into the 21st century. Shouldn’t we be past this by now?
If you are wondering why we still have to change the clocks, you’re not alone.
Those who would rather see the clock change go the way of the dodo cite sleep disruption and the resulting loss of productivity as well as increased risk of traffic accidents (in the spring and fall), mental health struggles (including Seasonal Affective Disorder) caused by decreased post-work/school hours of sunlight, and increased crime (because bad guys prefer their evil-doing in darkness).
The problem is that nobody can agree one whether to have permanent Standard Time (as in Hawaii and Arizona) or Permanent Daylight Saving Time. More than a dozen states have already passed legislation in support of keeping DST year-round, arguing it provides a better quality of life, with more light in the evenings. Paper Doll is generally in this camp. If you’re stuck at work all day, you probably want sunlight greeting you at the end of your workday so the winter hours don’t feel like drudgery. However, if you’ve got little kids, you probably don’t want them waiting for the school bus in the dark every morning.
Whether we go with Standard or Daylight Saving Time, there’s no way to make everyone happy, at least not until our AI overlords can update all of our clocks (and our circadian rhythms) in one fell swoop. Perhaps that’s why, although the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023 (which would have made DST permanent as of last year) received unanimous consent from the United States Senate in March 2022, the bill has languished in the House of Representatives. Sigh. How very disorganized of them.
Assuming our leaders don’t straighten this out, we’ll be changing our clocks yet again this March, so let’s at least take an opportunity to laugh about it, courtesy of the Holderness Family.
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your College-Bound Student for Grownup Life: Part 3
Parents, you’re counting down the precious days left with your college-bound students. Meanwhile, they’re counting down until they experience “freedom” and (gulp) adult responsibilities. In recent posts, we’ve covered a wide variety of skills and information to ensure they are prepared for the world beyond having you as a backup ride, bank, chief cook, and bottle-washer.
Organize Your College-Bound Student for Grown-Up Life: Part 1 identified essential legal documents and insurance policies, and reviewed the key financial skills every first-year student needs.
Organize Your College-Bound Student for Grownup Life: Part 2 looked at communication skills, staying safe on campus and off, and the under-appreciated life lessons of mastering laundry.
This third installment of the college life skill syllabus delves into keeping all the time management balls in the air, developing an academic safety net, being a safe car operator, and social etiquette to ensure good relationships. There’s even a smattering of bonus life skills.
We finish up with with a bibliography of reading resources for you and for your college-bound student.
HOW TO MASTER TIME AT COLLEGE
In high school, time is fairly regimented; the bell rings every fifty minutes, moving students on to their next classes. There’s study hall to get a start on homework, and teachers provide periodic, staged deadlines for students to show their progress and keep from falling behind; they turn in a topic idea, then a bibliography, outline, first draft, and finally a completed report. Class periods before tests are earmarked for reviews. Academic prep time is spoon-fed.
In college, the freedom to set your own schedule has the drawback of requiring an adult sense of perspective on prioritizing what’s important (and not just urgent or fun). Wide swaths of free time must be divvied up and self-assigned: for studying new material, doing problem sets, completing projects, and preparing for exams.
Food and clean clothes are not delivered by magic fairies; they may require transportation, funds, labor, and time!
College-bound kids may not want to take advice regarding time management, but try to start conversations to get them thinking about how to:
- Wake up on time — If they can’t count on conscientiousness, encourage them to make breakfast plans with a friend who can swing by prod them. Also, point them toward Do (Not) Be Alarmed: Paper Doll’s Wake-Up Advice for Productivity.
- Develop a schedule — In order to make time for academics, extracurriculars, sleep, exercise, and self-care, discuss the value of time-blocking and planning an ideal week, then tweaking as the semester goes along. Keeping a schedule in one’s head is a recipe for disaster; a paper or digital planner makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. A few helpful guides:
- Highlights from the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit
- Surprising Productivity Advice & the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit
- Paper Doll Shares Secrets from the Task Management & Time Blocking Summit 2022
- Struggling To Get Things Done? Paper Doll’s Advice & The Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit 2022
- Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity
- Develop and maintain healthy routines to support their goals — Brainstorm ideas for how to ensure healthy habits (exercise, eating actual meals somewhere near meal times, etc.) by linking activities to make a chain of positive behaviors.
- Don’t fight your body clock — In business, we’re often made to feel like there’s something wrong with us if we’re not morning people, but in college, people look askance if you don’t want to party all night. There’s no shame in needing an early night if you have an 8 a.m. class.
- Get out in front of procrastination — We procrastinate because we’re nervous about how something will turn out. We’d prefer our Present Self feeling comfortable; Future Self is on its own.
Explain how to beat procrastination by understanding its causes and then incorporating good planning, prioritizing, and decision-making techniques (like the Eisenhower Decision Matrix), and locating accountability support. These Paper Doll posts can help:
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- Paper Doll On Understanding and Conquering Procrastination
- Use the Rule of 3 to Improve Your Productivity
- Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done
- Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions
- Paper Doll Sees Double: Body Doubling for Productivity
- Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek
- Paper Doll Shares 8 Virtual Co-Working Sites to Amp Up Your Productivity
They can even try some Study with Rory Gilmore videos, including this one that incorporates the Pomodoro Technique!
I can’t think of a better expert for your college (and college-bound high school) students, especially those with ADHD, than my fabulous colleague Leslie Josel. She’s the one who developed an amazing Academic Planner for middle-grade and high school students, and I interviewed her for Paper Doll Peeks Behind the Curtain with Superstar Coach, Author & Speaker Leslie Josel.
Order Leslie’s book, How to Do It Now Because It’s Not Going Away: An Expert Guide to Getting Stuff Done, before the semester gets too far, and you’ll help your first-year college student conquer procrastination, develop excellent study skills, and really dissipate their stress.
HOW TO SUCCEED ACADEMICALLY
Paper Mommy has been many great things, but an eager student was never one of them. In the mid-1950s, she and her friends stood in the college gymnasium, lost in the registration chaos. They asked one snazzy-looking fellow what he was taking. Statistics. And that’s how my mother, who majored in nursery school education, ended up in a statistics course.
The professor asked Paper Mommy‘s friend, Shirley to her Laverne, about one of the concepts. As if on a game show, the friend said, “I’ll pass.” The professor replied, “You wanna bet?”
Seek support
Navigating college academic life requires a different set of skills and strategies compared to high school. Paper Mommy and her friends would have benefited from knowing to:
- Talk to your advisor — Paper Mommy and her friends did not know that they had assigned advisors, not merely the college equivalent of a high school guidance counselor, but someone with expertise in a student’s chosen major.
- Read the syllabus — A syllabus is a magic wand for success, spelling out everything a student must know and do, and when. Take notes on the deadlines to plan backward.
- Go to office hours — College professors and teaching assistants won’t spoon-feed the material; it isn’t high school. But showing up for office hours (after studying to figure out what questions to ask) will help clarify material and set your kid apart from fellow students,
- Seek out peer tutoring — Colleges offer a variety of academic help, but students have to advocate for themselves, ask for help, and make their own appointments.
- Find or form study groups — To be certain you understand something, try to teach it to someone else.
Expand upon good learning and study habits
- Participate in class — Lectures, labs, and tutorials may contain insights that textbooks don’t. Encourage asking questions and participating in discussions. Engaging with the material and observing how the professor and other students engage with it deepens understanding and make the material more compelling.
- Explore different note-taking methods — From outlining and mind-mapping to the Cornell Note-taking Method and the Boxing Method, students can find ways to take notes that support differing learning styles and specific coursework types.
- Find the right study environment — Students should experiment to figure out where they concentrate best, whether it’s the library, a coffee house, or an empty classroom, or under a tree, as Rory Gilmore found at Yale. (The TV Ambiance YouTube page is full of virtual study environments from favorite TV shows!) Just be sure to have a backup location in case someone steals your space!
- Embrace active learning — Go to study skills labs to learn how to use active learning techniques like summarizing, teaching the material to someone else, or using flashcards.
- Review material often — Spaced repetition, or reviewing material frequently, in small chunks, helps reinforce learning and improve retention better than cramming.
- Embrace editing — One of the biggest failings of new (smart) college students is that they fail to edit their papers. Proofreading is correcting errors; editing involves reviewing arguments to make sure they are logical and actually respond to the assigned questions. Read aloud to see if it makes sense. Seek feedback; does it make sense to someone else?
Parents, encourage your student to balance academic work with self-care. Burnout is real and presents a danger to mental and physical health. Urge them to work hard, but also to participate in informal and formal social activities, hobbies, and relaxation.
Talk often so you can recognize if your student is struggling academically or personally.
DEVELOP SOCIAL ETIQUETTE FOR COLLEGE
Manners aren’t just about knowing which fork to use when there are a multitude on the table. (But in case they get a good internship and rub elbows with movie stars or royalty, the basics are as simple as: start with the utensils on the outside and work toward your plate!)
They’ll roll their eyes, but remind them that basic manners will help them live more easily with dorm-mates, work smoothly with fellow students on group projects, and not embarrass themselves if invited to the home of a professor or to stay a weekend with a roommate’s family. Like:
- Don’t eat or use what isn’t yours without permission. (Then replace it or return the favor.)
- Don’t move something that doesn’t belong to you; if it’s in your way, put it back as soon as possible.
- Return borrowed items quickly. Launder or dry-clean borrowed clothes. Refill the gas tank of a borrowed car.
- Reciprocate other’s kind behaviors.
Other real-world manners and etiquette tips college-bound students might not have absorbed:
Dining
- Know which is your bread and which is your drink — Make the OK sign with both hands on the table in front of you. One makes a lowercase “b” (on your left) and “d” (on your right). The “b” for bread means your bread plate goes to your upper left; the “d” for drink means the glass to your upper right is yours. Don’t butter an entire slice of bread or roll and then eat it (except at your own breakfast table). Break off a bite-sized piece of bread, apply butter (or jam, etc.) and eat.
- Wait until everyone has been served (or seated with their dining tray) to eat. Don’t gobble your food. You are not Cookie Monster.
- Don’t rush to leave before your companions are done eating. (If you need to leave to get to class, apologize for not staying until the other person is finished.)
- Know when and how much to tip in restaurants, for pizza delivery, etc.
Social Interactions
- Introductions — Know how to properly introduce yourself and others in a social setting, with first and last names.
- Handshake — Offer a firm (not limp, not crushing) handshake, smile, and make eye contact. (If eye contact makes you uncomfortable, remember, it’s not a staring contest. Connect, then look anywhere in the general vicinity of the other person’s face.)
- Personal space — Respecting others’ personal space in social and professional settings requires situational and cultural awareness and understanding the nuances of physical boundaries. Don’t touch people without asking.
- Phones — Don’t look at your phone when you’re eating or socializing with others unless responding to something urgent. Put phones away at the meal table.
- Thank You Notes — A good thank you note, sent promptly, goes a long way to show appreciation after receiving a gift, being hosted, getting interviewed, or being the beneficiary of an act of kindness.
- RSVP — Explain that not replying to an RSVP inconveniences a host. Replying in a timely manner and committing to that response helps the host plan (financially and logistically).
- Online social interactions — A digital footprint lasts forever, and online behavior matters. Being a jerk online has the potential to ruin a reputation just as much as being a jerk at a party.
- Networking — Your college kid isn’t thinking about the business world, but people help and do business with those they know, like, and trust. Help them see the importance of strengthening connections by sharing personal stories where maintaining connections, being generally useful, and even sending a LinkedIn connection request with a personalized message can mean a lot down the road.
Cultural Sensitivity
Good cross-cultural etiquette means not judging people who don’t follow the above guidelines.
Respect diversity. Understand cultural differences in manners, and be open to learning and adapting when doing study abroad or interacting in other cultural settings.
Use language that’s respectful, inclusive, and kind.
CARE FOR THE CAMPUS CAR
@the_leighton_show The low fuel warning also doesn’t stop my wife from going to @target #teenagers #drivinglessons #driving #parentsoftiktok #funny
Even if your student has been on the road for a few years, being a car owner (or responsible party) is different from driving Mom’s car to school. Car care can be a mystifying area of adulthood.
Oversee that inspections and major maintenance gets done when your student is home for breaks, and jointly go through the recommended auto maintenance schedule in the car’s manual. Help them figure out how to either do basic car care or to get it done professionally.
Teach the basics, like how to:
- Fill the gas tank before it’s only 1/4 full (and not when the gas light comes on). This is especially important if they attend school in wintery locales.
- Fill the tank on a schedule, not when it’s empty, but perhaps every Saturday after lunch. (And don’t try to put diesel in a non-diesel vehicle!)
- Download an app for finding the best gas prices, like Gas Buddy.
- Know how to check the oil before the oil light comes on. Oil and filter changes don’t have to be done as frequently as they used to, due to synthetic oil, but it still must be done.
- Know how to check tire pressure and fill tires properly.
- Know what the dashboard lights mean. — I once heard someone call the tire pressure alert the “Surprise Light.”
- Understand how to check and change fuses, replace windshield wipers, and know when to seek a professional mechanic.
Prepare them for emergencies. They should:
- Know how to jump start a car — If you’re sending your kids off to college with jumper cables, teach them how to use them! Consider also writing out step-by-step instructions and tucking it in with the cables.
- Know how to change a flat tire — Not everyone has the physical strength to change a tire, and not all locations are safe. Spring for a membership in AAA or similar roadside emergency service.
- Know what to do in case of an accident, or if someone breaks their window or steals the car:
DON’T GET SCAMMED AT COLLEGE
According to a study by the Better Business Bureau, 18-24 year-olds are more often victims of scams than senior citizens! Teaching college students to recognize and avoid scams is crucial. Encourage a skeptical mindset.
Common Scams Targeting College Students
Just as I wrote about scams that target seniors in Slam the Scam! Organize to Protect Against Scams, there are many that target college students, including:
- Scholarship and grant scams — Legitimate scholarships don’t ask for fees.
- Student loan scams — Be wary of companies that promise to forgive or lower student loans for a fee. Confirm loan information through the school’s financial aid office or consult government (.gov) websites like Federal Student Aid.
- Housing scams — When seeking off-campus housing, avoid listings requiring upfront payments before touring properties. Use reputable rental sites; don’t send money via wire transfer.
- Job scams — Know that legitimate employers don’t ask for bank information until you’ve been officially hired. Be wary of job offers promising high pay for minimal work.
Watch for Red Flags
- Urgency and high pressure tactics — The world is full of deadlines, but scammers use fear of missing out to create a sense of urgency. Don’t become a victim by being pressured to act quickly without time to analyze what’s happening.
- Unsolicited Offers — Be dubious about any unsolicited contact from outside of the school’s usual resources, whether by email, phone, or (especially) text, whether seeking personal information or offering services, funds, or assistance.
- Unusual Payment Methods — Students need to understand that payment by check or credit card is normal, but requests for payment by gift card, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency are hallmarks of scams. Legitimate transactions use secure, traceable payment methods.
- If a financial loan, grant, paid internship, or side hustle seems “too good to be true,” especially if the college’s financial aid office or academic departments doesn’t know anything about it, it’s likely a scam.
Always do independent research and verification. Check websites, Google to make sure phone numbers and addresses aren’t fake, and seek unbiased reviews. Consult trusted sources, including professors and advisors, college financial aid and work/study divisions, and yes, parents.
Online Safety
GenZ will be dubious that parents can advise them on online safety, but talk about:
- Privacy Settings — Adjust social media privacy to limit personal information visible to the public.
- Phishing Scams — Be wary about emails, texts, or social media direct messages that appear to be from trusted individuals or institutions but ask for personal information or money, or contain suspicious links. Pick up the phone and verify by calling people or institutions directly.
- Secure Websites — Look for “https://” in the URL and the padlock icon in the URL bar before entering personal or financial information!
Report Scams
- Report scams to campus security, local police, and organizations like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fraud division, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the U.S. Department of EducationOffice of Inspector General (OIG).
- Document — Keep records of all suspicious communications and transactions to support resolving issues.
RANDOM LIFE SKILLS
I lived in the International Living Center at Cornell for all four years of college. Of 144 students in our dorm, only about 15% were from North America; whether they were the youngest freshman or the oldest grad students — from ages 16 to 34 — many students experienced some sort of culture shock.
College is already its own kind of culture shock. Your students shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help. That said, adopting an attitude of weaponized incompetence instead of seeking to learn how to do something themselves may eventually annoy roommates, friends, and professors. In these last days before college, make sure they know:
- How to tell time on an analog clock — Additionally, it appears that many GenZers are miffed when GenXers and Boomers use expressions like “a quarter ’til” or “half past” because they think it’s some kind of code. And does your student understand time zones?
- How to use public transportation — If your kid will be living in a city where subways, light rail, or busses are essential for moving around, they’ll need to learn…fast. If you don’t know how to navigate, where to stand, or how to pay, ask someone who does know to give you and your student a lesson in the basics.
- How to read a map — GPS can be flawed. GPS (and cellular service) can go down. Being able to read and understand both digital and paper maps is a key navigation skill. (So is orienteering, but if your kid is leaving for campus in a week or two, it may be too late.)
- How to hide emergency money — “Mad money” was a 20th-century term for having some cash set aside so you could escape a bad date and get home safely. You never know when you might need money or an approximation thereof and Apple Pay won’t cut it.
A friend recently recalled how fellow students used to keep subway tokens in their penny loafers in the 1980s. My grandfather, Paper Mommy‘s dad, was interviewed by a newspaper in the 1930s after being robbed outside of a hotel; he reported that hadn’t lost all of his cash because he’d hidden some bills in his socks!
Advise hiding a few dollars inside their phone case.
- How to unclog a toilet or a drain — Bonus points for teaching them how to turn off the water at the source. It may not be necessary in the dorms, but once they have an apartment, knowing how to find the shutoff valve for an overflowing toilet, sink, or washing machine will be a nifty skill.
- How to change a light bulb — Yes, seriously. Turn it off and let it cool before unscrewing it. As with screws, hoses, shower heads and similar items: righty tighty, lefty loosey.
- How to sew a button back on.
- How to swim — Yes, we’re cutting it close in mid-August, but some schools (such as my alma mater) required and still require swimming proficiency (for safety’s sake).
No matter how much these three posts have tried to cover everything, it’s likely you’ll have your own submissions for Chip Leighton’s The Leighton Show by the end of the school year. (The caption is the same, but this one is different from the videos in the last two posts.)
@the_leighton_show What’s your street name?? #text #college #freshman #son #daughter #mom #dad #humor #greenscreen
RESOURCES FOR COLLEGE-BOUND STUDENTS
The Adulting Manual by Milly Smith
The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College by Harlan Cohen
RESOURCES FOR PARENTS
Articles for Parents of College-Bound Students and New College Students
- 15 Life Skills Every Kid Should Know Before They Leave for College (SheKnows.com)
- 70 Life Skills Your Kid Needs Before College (MommyPoppins.com)
- 11 Things Your Kid Should Know Before They Leave For College (Huffington Post)
- 100 Essential Life Skills Teens Need to Learn at Home (Grown&Flown.com)
- First kid heading to college next year – what do you wish you knew/wish your parents had known before you went? (Reddit)
- College Parent Central
- A Parent Guide to Supporting Your College-Bound Student (Study.com)
- Tips for Parents/Families of First-Year Students (UC Santa Cruz)
Support and Advice Groups for Parents
- CollegeConfidential.com Parents’ Forum
- College Parent Insider’s Group
- Facebook groups for parents of students at your child’s college — Search Facebook for “parents” and the school’s name. Official groups may be moderated by school personnel; others are independent and moderated by fellow parents.
- College-based forums — Some colleges set up their own online forum or listserv for parents. Google “parent groups” or “parent forum” and your child’s school, and you will find sites like this one from the University of Minnesota.
Note: there’s a balance between asking group members to recommend an emergency dentist for your first-year who just cracked a molar and being a “helicopter parent” who tries to stir up controversy over a professor who gave your student a B. Check out Before You Join That College Parents Group on Social Media… at CollegeInitative.net.
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