"Time is making fools of us again..." -Albus Dumbledore

The April issue of Real Simple magazine devoted a lengthy article to women and time. How they manage it, what they do in their free time (sadly, clean), what they'd do if they had more of it. Time has been on my mind a lot lately. Like money and chocolate, there never seems to be enough of it (at least not enough of the 'free' variety). I know they say everyone has the same amount of time, but I beg to differ. Because we all have different demands on our time. 

Do you ever put too much on your plate and find yourself over-extended and overwhelmed? I do. It's then that I have to remind myself to back off, to attempt to master the tricky balancing act of priorities, to try to fill the hours of my days with the things that matter most. 

Of course having a baby altered my free time allotment dramatically. But it also caused an incredible thing to happen. The value of my time went way up. A major inflation, you could say. Free time transformed into something rare and therefore precious. So although I have less time, I use it with greater care, and probably accomplish as much overall as I did in my childless years. Because before I had a baby, it wasn't a big deal to piddle away hours watching television. 

I've found that for me, one key to productivity is having time restraints. The less time I have to write, the more I want to write. The less time I have to execute ideas, the more ideas I have. Inaccessibility increases desirability. It's ironic, to be sure, but it's also human nature. 

I know that like me, my readers are also wrestling time--so I try to keep my posts concise. Thanks for sharing some of your day's minutes with me.