The Time Flow Chart

I have this post up at Chicago Moms Blog today. It's about the problem I've been having lately with getting places on time. Basically, I concluded that my problem is that I'm not building in enough time in my plans to accommodate unforeseen toddler antics when we're getting ready to go somewhere. Like, here's an example of my typical line of erroneous thinking:

Okay, so music class starts at 10:15. It takes us 5 minutes to get there, and 3 minutes to walk from the car, so we'll get ready to leave at 10:00 and we'll be fine.

Well, first of all, according to my mom, it always takes at least ten minutes to get anywhere, even to your neighbor's house. But the main problem isn't the drive time, it's the getting-out-the-door time. See, my problem is that I incorrectly assume that the time we get ready to leave the house and the time we pull out of the driveway are the same time. And maybe when you go places without a toddler, those two times are roughly the same, save for in the winter when you need to put on a lot of extra articles of clothing. (But even in the winter, the average adult can put on a coat, hat, gloves, and scarf in about 1-2 minutes.)

But let's use the afore-mentioned music class to provide an example of how getting out the door with a toddler actually breaks down:

10:00: Tell child it's time to leave.
10:00-10:05: Child has tantrum because he doesn't want to go to enriching music class that you paid $54 for, he would rather stay and play with his plastic toys and/or watch the same DVD he's seen 100 times.
10:05-10:10: Getting shoes/outwear on yourself and child, and gathering up belongings.
10:10-10:15: Walking from house to car, which in a two-year-old's world is not a straight, 20-foot path, but rather a circuitous path consisting of several stalling-related side destinations.
10:15-10:17: Getting in carseat
10:17-10:22: Driving
10:22-10:25: Walking extremely short distance at toddler pace from car to room where music class is held.

And note that we are now 10 minutes late for a 45-minute class that costs me $9 per session. Which means, doing the math, we've lost out on $2 worth of class time.

It's not so much the money that frustrates me, because I will have spent that money regardless of whether we're at the class or not. But I just find being late to be really stressful. I am embarrassed. And, in the case of my classes at the gym, I always miss the warm-up, which I think is problematic from a physiological standpoint, but also means I lose 10 minutes of Weight Watchers points-earning time.

And since the stress of lateness is something that can totally be avoided, I decided this week to try the new tactic of the Time Flow Chart. I borrow this term/concept from my dad and stepmom, who are extremely organized and never late to anything. The Time Flow Chart is not so much an actual flow chart with boxes and arrows and stuff (although I guess you could make one like that if, say, one event hinged on whether or not another event happened first). Anyway, my Time Flow Chart is more like a combination of a to-do list and a schedule. So, it would look like this:

7:30: Wake up
7:30-8:00: General Internet surfing
8:00: Get in shower
8:30-9:45: Breakfast, get Nathan ready, fold laundry, pack lunches, make grocery list
9:45: Start getting ready to leave for music class
10:00: Drive to music class
10:15-11:00: Music class
11:00-12:00: grocery shopping

And on and on and on. You get the point. I have broken down each little thing we need to do into several steps, so as to acknowledge that we need prep time for each activity.

My first 4 days Time Flow Charts have gone well. I have definitely eliminated some of the stress of being late.

However, I think writing down every single thing you're going to do and when you're going to do it kind of adds a little stress, too.

First of all, one of the reasons I usually don't make to-do lists is that I think that the act of writing down everything you have to do tends to make you think up more stuff to do than you actually have to get done. You know, like, "While I'm at it, I might as well knock out a few loads of laundry, too."

Second, there's the stress that can be caused by getting off-schedule, which is something I am trying to avoid. Right now my husband's car is broken, which means I have to drop him off and pick him up from the train station. He does not come and go on a fixed schedule, so now I'm adding in the unknowns of his transportation into my perfectly-created, well-planned schedule. (I guess this would be the time to break out the true flow chart-style Time Flow Chart, where subsequent events would flow based on the time that I had to pick up/drop off Husband, but honestly I don't want to think as hard as you would have to in order to make a flow chart like that.) So, I have to try really hard to just let it go when I get off schedule, and to realize that my plans on paper might be too ambitious and unrealistic. Some things get crossed off the schedule because they didn't get done. Or I draw arrows to move an activity from one time to another.

The flip-side is that by knowing everything I have to do in a day, I can sometimes actually get certain activities done earlier than planned. And I have eliminated the stress that comes from those "Oh crap! I forgot I was supposed to _______!" moments.

Oh and by the way, I do build in time for naps and other leisure activities, which is either really healthy or really pathetic (the pathetic part coming from having to write those things down on a to-do list).

I think things are less stressful in terms of Nathan's shenanigans. I'm not freaking out when he throws a tantrum, because I know I have allowed enough time for that. And my calmness actually calms him down, so we aren't just two big balls of stress who feed off each other.

Anyway, so the Time Flow Chart is kind of a mixed bag. But I think for now I'm going to stick with it.