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time management

especially if you don’t get to see them much during the week. Can
you work another trade? You’d have to find a way that would also
fit the kids’ “schedules,” of course. (Don’t decide to give up watch-
ing Saturday Night Live to play with your four-year-old.)

Can’t find a way to do the recycling without abandoning the
kids? Then you might have to leave the recycling to somebody else.

The third example looks like a terrific swap. Instead of wast-
ing time on mindless television, you’ll be exercising your critical
skills and absorbing great literature. Maybe. But television and
print are simply media of expression. The content surely has to
factor into the equation. Are you giving up reruns of a sitcom to
read genuinely stimulating books? Go for it. But swapping concert
performances on television for works of breathy romance may not
be a great deal. (I’m not saying it isn’t. It’s a matter of taste.)

To do this right, you should figure in the quality of that two-hour
group discussion, too. Are you having a good time in the company
of stimulating conversationalists, or do you come home fuming over
all those “nitwitted numbskulls” in your reading group?

Heartless or Practical?

All this computing of relative worth may seem cold and calculat-
ing, and you do risk squeezing all the spontaneity out of life if
you always draw up a list before you act. (I have a friend who put
together a “pro” and “con” list of reasons to leave his wife. Now
that’s heartless. But I digress.) This objective figuring is in fact a
way to heed your heart by giving more time to activities that sup-
port your core values.

You would never consciously choose to neglect your kids. But
you might choose to spend less time with them by default, without
realizing you were doing so, when you take on the socially worthy
work of being your neighborhood recycling czar. Well-meaning
resolutions to “make it up to them” might quiet your conscience,
but it probably won’t translate into actual time spent.

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