There Are Better Options Than Netflix or Scrolling the News
Planning ahead is the key
Laura Vanderkam, the time management expert who wrote Off the Clock and Juliet’s School of Possibilities, is here to answer your scheduling questions. Check back every week for more advice, and send your own productivity problems to asklaura@medium.com. (Your name will not be used.)
Dear Laura: Like many working parents, my only free time tends to be after I put the kids to bed at 8 p.m. I’m totally exhausted by then, and it’s not easy to leave the house. Sure, I can watch Netflix or scroll social media, but it really doesn’t feel like “free” time at all. Any advice?
When we think of leisure time, many of us picture a day at the spa. Since most of us don’t spend many days at the spa — especially now, as we hunker down for self-quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic — we then believe that free time is a theoretical concept, or something only for the very privileged.
But the problem may not be a lack of time. It’s that a lot of our free time — especially for parents with kids home from school — is inconvenient to use for anything other than binge-watching TV or scrolling the news endlessly. And now that so many of us are working from home and housebound, it can be hard to think of anything to do in the evening other than turn…
