What's Your MPG?

I pull the covers up to my chin and close my eyes, the dim bathroom light glowing faintly through my eyelids as Joenelle finishes getting ready for bed. I sigh contentedly and drift off to sleep knowing I'll get a full eight hours tonight, a rare phenomenon nowadays.

Not thirty minutes later, I wake up with my heart racing. The bright light of the baby monitor fills the room as Murph's calls of "Dada, Mama" come through between sobs and tears. I bury my face in my pillow, push out a long exhale, and pray she puts herself back to sleep.

I assume God is getting his full eight hours because the squalls continue for another few minutes before we relent. We spend the next two hours settling Murph back down before finally shutting our eyes around 1:30 a.m. I wake up five hours later to the dogs whining for breakfast and think to myself, "I guess a full eight hours will have to wait until tomorrow."

I'm sitting in front of Murph, watching her eat her ketchup with a side of eggs, and thinking about everything I have to do today. Coach a class, write a newsletter, respond to some emails, vote, work out, and knock out a few household tasks. A sense of overwhelm starts in my stomach and quickly makes its way to my brain.

It's just so strange. Years ago, I would've blown through those to-dos in a few hours, and now I'm worried I won't get it all done in a day. Sitting there in front of my daughter, I start getting frustrated that I feel incapable of accomplishing the same amount of work as my former self.

Of course, life looks a lot different now. Years ago, I lived alone, had fewer responsibilities, and generally had more control over my schedule. Now I've got a family, more work, and a whole lot more competing for my attention. And after last night's adventures with Murph, I'm certainly not starting the day with a full tank.

But that's not going to make my to-do list any shorter. If anything, life seems to keep adding miles to the trip without giving me any more gas to get there.

I can't always control how much energy I have or how much life asks of me, but I can work on improving my miles per gallon (MPG). Getting more done with the energy I have instead of expecting myself to somehow find more of it.

Be it adding kids to our lives, working a stressful job, dealing with health issues, or taking a tougher course load, life generally continues to ask more of us without necessarily giving us more energy to meet those demands.

And while our first instinct might be to work harder or squeeze a few more hours out of the day, I wonder how much energy we could save by simply being more efficient.

So where can we be more fuel efficient?

Maybe it's the time we spend deciding what to work on, the constant interruptions that make simple tasks take twice as long, or a responsibility we've continued doing the hard way simply because that's how we've always done it.

Let's each pick one and ask ourselves, How could we accomplish the same thing with less energy?

Could we eliminate a step, make a decision once instead of repeatedly, ask for help, or create a system that saves us from solving the same problem over and over?

We don't need to overhaul our entire routines. Just find one place where a little more efficiency could make a noticeable difference.

As much as we'd all love to wake up every morning with a full tank and an empty to-do list, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

And if life is going to keep adding miles to our trips, we might as well work on getting better mileage.

Fact

Switching between tasks can create “attention residue,” where part of our attention remains focused on the previous task, making it harder to concentrate on the next one. (Sophie Leroy, 2009)

Action

Think of a problem you've solved more than once. Create a checklist, template, or routine so you don't have to start from scratch next time.

Question

What's something you do the hard way simply because you've never stopped to consider an easier way?

Quote

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”

- Henry David Thoreau