Help with Overscheduling, time management and taking on too much!

Your schedule is completely unrealistic. You're not allowing yourself enough time to sleep. You're not allowing yourself enough time to relax. You're not allowing yourself to work in appropriate chunks of time on anything. You're constantly task-switching, which is probably why you describe everything as "frantic" -- you're not leaving yourself enough time to get into a task. Additionally, you are taking the entirety of your household duties on yourself. This is insane. Your son is 12. He can feed himself second breakfast, help with the animals, help with the housework, help with the cooking. At 12, I walked and fed the dog, cleaned my room, did the dishes, helped with laundry, did yard work, and picked up after myself. I also got up at 7AM, because I had school at 8. I did activities after school, did my homework, and helped around the house. Why is your son not required to help? Where is your husband? Why is he not contributing at all to the household tasks? Why can't he do any housework or run any errands?

This is my current schedule I created which I never seem to live up to! 5:20 AM - 6:30 AM (two days a week I wake up at 4:30 AM wat. Don't get up in the middle of the night. to run with a friend in order to get back home before my husband leaves for work at 6:30 AM) cook breakfast for my husband and pack his lunch You know, if your husband leaves for work at 6:30 am, it's very nice of you to cook his breakfast. If you want to do that, do it. But how about you get up at 6, and cook the breakfast from a mise en place you did the night before? He could either buy or pack his own lunch. I know money-management books talk fire and brimstone about buying your lunch, but this kind of scheduling hell is exactly why I'm skeptical of that. 6:30-7:00 AM - drink coffee and browse facebook,email - get dressed etc...stretch and do strength exercises if it is a running day. 6:30 - 7:30 you could be exercising now. 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM go upstairs to my office and work until I can no longer stave off hunger - What is so great about staving off hunger? It's as if you're actually trying to cause yourself a "stress freakout" by neglecting your nutritional needs. Why didn't you eat breakfast with your husband earlier? Anyway, now that you're exercising between 6:30 and 7:30 you won't want to be eating breakfast with your husband because it's before your workout. But you can eat breakfast between 7:30 and 8:00, then dress between 8:00 and 8:30. I'm impressed that you can dress in only half an hour, BTW. lately instead of working on a specific project - I spend this time triaging my overdue task list - some work and some personal - So even the small scraps of time you dole out to your paid work, are spent switching between that and personal projects. I need to get in at least 3 billable hours a day M-F. I have 4 clients right now and I am not sure 15 hours is enough to get it all done but if I work any more than that I tend to have a stress freak out because I don't take care of my nutritional and sleep needs. You'll have to do this work later in the day. You're not getting it done now anyway. 9:00-9:30 AM - make and eat breakfast - take care of chickens and cats, greet 12yo son who wakes around this time 8:30-9:30 - you know, I allocate half an hour each morning to daily cleaning, and it's often not enough, and the reason is often cleaning, feeding and litter-changing for my three cats. That's just three cats, only one of whom uses a litter box. If you have chickens to take care of too, I really think an hour each morning is cutting it fine. At least you already had breakfast. Nthing others' suggestions to train your son to take over either the chickens or the cats. 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM - frantically try to work or accomplish something that is overdue - son usually get fruit or cereal for himself 10:30 AM - 11: 00 AM - feed son 2nd breakfast with protein and fat so he can concentrate on school 11:00 - 11:30 AM - frantic household chores or errands So for you it's work-cooking-chores around in a circle, and for your son it's breakfast-2nd breakfast over those two hours. You're truly just running around in circles here. At 9:30 you can cook the proper breakfast for your son, if you insist that the fruit and cereal aren't enough. He'll have earned it by taking care of at least one set of animals. Or maybe he's fine with the fruit and cereal. Why are your household chores "frantic", other than that you're constantly task switching between that and everything else? Why aren't you doing these chores as you go along? I suggest instituting a new regime whereby you explain to your husband and son that the household chores are really getting on top of you and you are now going to clean as you go, and you need them to do the same. Ask them to keep the sinks clean and the hand towels fresh, to put their stuff away, to put dirty dishes straight into the dishwasher, to unload the dishwasher if they walk into the kitchen and find that it's finished its cycle, and to stack non-machine-washable dishes neatly by the sink for batch washing by hand. It's good to have a designated time each day for running errands, but if you're just running in circles each day until 11:30 then something is wrong. How many of these errands really need to be done? How can you run any one errand in half an hour or less - that seems impossible? 11:30 - 3 PM - homeschooling with son and lunch / driving son to activities and classes - So you're providing your son with three and a half hours of schooling each day, minus lunch and driving time? Seems like not a whole lot? May I respectfully suggest that he might go to school instead? 3 - 4 PM: more frantic inefficient work It does seem like you can't homeschool your son AND do your job. I suggest that either the homeschooling or the job has to go. 4 - 7 PM: more household stuff, dinner prep, meal planning - talk to husband! dinner clean up Where is all this household stuff coming from? You are spending 6 hours 20 minutes a day - on an ideal day - on household chores. 7 - 9 PM: exercise if I did not run in the morning / attempt to keep up with friends, tv or read You're blocking out 2 hours 50 minutes in which you might exercise, but not all of that is actually spent on exercise. You also slot it into your optional/recreational time, which is actually making it your joint last priority along with your paid work. You've allocated 4 hours per day, in 3 intermittent blocks, to do your 15 hours' billable work per week, and 7 days a week - 28 hours allocated to doing 15 hours' billable work - isn't enough for you, which is not surprising because of the constant task switching and the low priority you give to it. Your biggest priority seems to be housework. Your second priority is your son's homeschooling, to which you allocate about half the amount of time you do to housework. Your last priority is your paid employment, which you fit in when you can, followed by your exercise regime. I try to be in bed asleep by 10:00 PM or before! If you are getting up at night to go running, that leaves you six and a half hours' sleep, which probably isn't enough to motivate you through the day. I do 90-95% of the household chores - inside and out (laundry, bill paying, budget analysis, animal care, errands, food planning, purchase, prep and cleanup, driving son to activities, planning and delivering homeschool lessons etc. ) - I have recently started exercising which helps with my stress levels so I want to prioritize that as well. You do, but you're making it your last priority. Weekends end up looking the same sadly... Not surprising, since your workflow seems to be almost designed to stop you from being effective by switching between tasks, by iterating multiple times over the same task, and by dedicating the lion's share of your time to things that don't need to be done by you. There are days when I can follow this schedule but I lack the stamina? discipline? to keep with up everyday. Yeah, because when you don't get enough sleep, you lose your motivation to do well. I am at the point now where I feel like hiding under the covers all day! Any advice for someone who feels like she is about to go off the rails? Is this schedule unrealistic? Is there a tool to help me manage my work time better? You are trying to do everything at once. Literally, at once. You are constantly switching tasks, and literally only pretending to do your paid work for your clients. Unless you can block out some continuous uninterrupted time to do this work, you shouldn't be selling your services to paying customers. You are spending a lot of time doing things that two other people in your household can probably do for themselves. So I think you probably can find and block out some time to do your paid work. I don't know why you are homeschooling your son, but if there's no extrinsic reason for it you should probably reconsider that. Maybe you're using housework as a form of procrastination? Because that is a good one, my friend. Evil comes in many fair disguises. I think you should ask yourself if you are playing a game of http://www.ericberne.com/games-people-play/harried/ here. According to Berne "The logical antithesis is simple: Mrs. White can fill each of her roles in succession during the week, but she must refuse to play two or more of them simultaneously." If you're actually playing Harried, though, it's more complicated. Full text is https://archive.org/stream/TheGamesPeoplePlay/TheGamesPeoplePlay_djvu.txt.

Generally, in households with two people working full time, household duties end up split with the remainder being outsourced (maids) or cut (granola bars for breakfast, buying lunch at work). True household management, especially when you incorporate homeschooling a kid, is a full time job. Add in 4 clients and you have stress. It's not that you have too many responsibilities, it's that you have too many tasks that you assume you can handle them all by yourself. You either need to outsource or cut some of these tasks. Your priorities will determine which.

I would be on the verge of a mental breakdown after a week on this schedule (a week, who are we kidding, 3 days). You're basically trying to run run run for about 14 hours with no breaks? And you don't even recover on weekends? You have too many things to do. You can outsource some of it, and your family can contribute around the house.

It seems like your son could perhaps take over some of the household chores so they aren't so frantic? Perhaps consider assigning the animals to him - my 10 year old takes care of our pets and she seems to enjoy it. I don't make her scoop poop, but she gives them food and water and cleans up after them otherwise. I also expect my kids to clear the table after dinner and sweep up crumbs. Your husband should be able to make his own breakfast and lunch, unless he is disabled. If my husband expected me to cook him a hot breakfast from scratch every morning I would say "Ha!" and then I would hand him either a box of frosted mini wheats or microwaveable breakfast sandwiches. Network with other parents in activities to see if you can share in drop offs and pick ups. Just say "Hey, if I drop off my kid and your kid, would you be willing to do the pick up?" It's a mutually beneficial situation! Here's the bottom line: YOU are carrying far more weight than you need to be. Your husband needs to help out with the chores and household maintenance/upkeep. Your son needs to help, too! They need to be independent individuals. You deserve to be happy too!

Frankly, I just don't understand your schedule at all. Why are you doing 95 % of the household chores? Why is your husband incapable of getting his own breakfast and lunch (at least on days when you run)? Why are you working yourself to the bone under the assumption that the other two people in your household shouldn't have to lift a finger to help run it? What would happen if you told your husband and son to get their own breakfast and lunch?

I am assuming that your son does not have any significant developmental handicaps, and that he is expected to be able to function as an independent adult in the future. Given those assumptions (and if he does have developmental delays then apologies and ignore this), I am pretty horrified by this. Looking at your son's day, he gets up at 9.30, and then requires two breakfasts before he can cope with at best 2hrs actual tuition (once lunch and transport have been excluded). That might be ok for a five year old, but it is not enough for a teenager. How are you possibly covering maths, english, science, foreign languages, history, geography, art, music, sports and everything else? And how are you expecting him to transition to college or a full-time job in a couple of years? Either give up your job and actually teach him for a full six hours a day like he would get in school (he can get up at 7.30 like a normal schoolchild, and nobody needs two breakfasts plus lunch in the space of four hours), or just send him back to school and focus on your job. You cannot do both - you have tried and it isn't working. You are doing him no favours whatsoever with the current set up.

If your son were in school you would be able to accomplish everything else you need to do quite easily. How committed are you to the homeschooling thing - is this necessary for your son/your family?

There are way too many interruptions/switches in your days. Your husband can get his own breakfast and his lunch can be packed the night before. You could breakfast with him/before you try to do any work. You then work without interruptions for several hrs - your son can get his own breakfast incl. 2nd b'fast. Is there a real need why the household chores need to happen in the morning? Can they not be tagged on to the dinner stretch and the errands onto the driving son to wherever he needs to go?