Mr. BBB recently told me, “It seems like we work really hard at work, come home, work some more, collapse in bed, and then repeat.” It took me some time to process his statement (I was at the time trying to find the best way to scrub dried squash from in between the bars of one of the high chairs and contemplating just how it could have ended up in said crevice in the first place). But once I did process this, I realized he was absolutely right. Our lives had become a never-ending series of chores and paid work. Sure, there was also some time playing with the babies, but even that had started to feel like a chore—an outcome I definitely did not expect given that I had enjoyed it a lot when I was off for my maternity leave. But that confused me somewhat. How had going back to work, and thus reducing my time with the babies, made me enjoy them even less?

As I thought about it more, however, I started to realize that going back to work had not just reduced my time with the girls; it had also reduced the amount of time I was able to spend doing other things around the house—cooking, cleaning, working on the renovation, etc. And not only that but my mother had also spent nearly five weeks with us after they were born, doing a lot of the cooking and cleaning that Mr. BBB and I now had to do. All of this meant that I was cramming the to-do list I previously had all day and help to do into the twenty minute period between when I woke up and when the babies did and the hour and a half between their bedtime and mine. Plus daycare had added more chores to the list—packing the diaper bag, portioning out the bottles, stuffing the cloth pocket diapers. With all of this that I felt I had to do, I spent a lot of the time I meant to spend interacting with the babies instead worrying about what I wasn’t doing—certainly not productive for anyone.

Still, something seemed off. I may have had less time overall, but I also should have had fewer things to do. We were no longer bothering to work on the renovation on weeknights given our time crunch, and Mr. BBB had taken over all of the cooking. Plus I was spending less time at work since the daycare hours provided a natural constraint on my day, I was sleeping about an hour less a night, and I wasn’t reading as many books or watching any television. So why was I still feeling like I wasn’t getting enough done?

I downloaded a time tracking app to my phone to try and help me answer my questions. I’m certainly not perfect at it, but in the 159 hours I logged last week, my top three categories were sleep (29.4%), work (26.7%), and childcare (15.2%). Despite the fact that I feel like I’m always cleaning, it was a paltry 3.7% of my time, most of which (2.5%) is for laundry. The aforementioned food-encrusted high chairs took only 16 minutes total for entire week (0.2% of my time). So despite feeling like I was always cleaning, I actually did just under six hours of it that week, or less than an hour a day. So in truth, cleaning was probably not my problem.

Since the top three are probably hard to reduce, I took a look at the next time suck on my list—transport. Based on my tracking, I spent seven hours, sixteen minutes, or 4.6% of my time, in transit. Admittedly, some of that is probably daycare drop off time because I haven’t yet gotten in the habit of stopping the clock to split that out into daycare prep, but it’s still an astonishing number. Given that we’re only 13 miles from work, most of which is on a highway that never has any traffic, I had not thought our commute was that bad. But once you add in the stoplight to turn onto our campus (which can last quite a while), finding a parking space, walking to my office, and loading and unloading the car, that time really adds up. It made me realize just how powerful living close to where you work is.

It also made me realize that I had a prime opportunity for some time optimization. Since Mr. BBB and I carpool into work at least once most days (he’s working a weird schedule right now to accommodate his team which is 24/7, so he bikes one way 3-4 times a week), I had 3+ hours each week to do something productive. I almost immediately came up with two different things—replacing the elastic in some of our cloth diapers and staying on top of the task list we’re notorious for not reviewing. So far, I’ve only been doing the latter, but it’s been great. I would definitely recommend carpooling to those of you who can—it saves a lot more than gas.

One other thing that I realized looking at my time log is that I spent only one hour, twenty-one minutes, or 0.8% of my time, exercising. I knew I wasn’t exercising as much as I should nor indeed as much as I wanted to, but it was not until I saw the numbers that I realized just how little time I was spending in this area. I’m working on changing it now—on trying to take a walk with the babies every day, even if it’s just a few hundred feet down the road to the neighbors’ house. I am also on the lookout for any workouts I can do while I’m with the babies. After all, the mat that’s down in their playpen looks and feels like a giant yoga mat (and the advertisement that came with it had people doing yoga on the front) so it seems like the perfect combination. We’ll see, I suppose. Perhaps it’s a good topic for a future post.

All in all, however, the biggest thing I learned from trying to log all of my time is that I switch between tasks and/or try to combine tasks too often. I’m constantly pausing one timer and starting another or puzzling over how to log the time I’m feeding the babies when I’m also listening to an audiobook and attempting to replace the elastic in cloth diapers (not that I would ever try such a crazy thing). So that is my final goal in the coming weeks—find a way to stay present with whatever task I am doing, even if it’s boring, so that I can get it done quickly and efficiently. And maybe along the way, I’ll rediscover the enjoyment I used to have in things.