If there’s a single question that Dana and I get asked a lot, it’s this one: “Where do you get the time to do this stuff?” We don’t mind the question at all – but I’ve just started to realize that it wasn’t rhetorical. Dana and I don’t really think about the answer all that often and don’t consider ourselves to be more active than many others, especially in this community. Frankly, I’m not sure my answers will be of any use to anyone else – but if this helps one person cook or share more, then I’m all in!
I suppose some of our time-savers come from our life situation: we don’t have children, we rent a loft and have no grass (but our back patio does have seats and tables for 30+ and kicks butt for dinner parties). We live downtown Toronto and have very close access to most of our common needs which also help. Dana works from home and thus has zero commute (although that is easily consumed by dog walking as we’ll share later).
Shopping at the CSA is a time-saver for us – our groceries are mostly pre-chosen, the night is committed to and, while our selection is huge compared to many CSAs, our choices are typically limited to 2 tables of fresh options. Grocery shopping is very fast – a few odd staples (like flour) are picked up at an alternate grocery store near my work (it’s all organic and features a lot of local options).
We also have some life factors that eat into time. Dana owns her own business and works long hours and my job keeps me out of the house at least 11-12 hours per day, 5 days per week. In that time I have little room for blog or cooking activities but it is not beyond me to eat lunch reading a cook book. Our awesome dog (Schaeffer) is walked twice a day (most days, on the weekends this sometimes turns into one extra long walk). Dana walks him for an hour or longer in the morning and leaves the house early to do so. The time she saves in commuting is easily replaced by the walk.
I think it’s important to note that Dana and I have been project people our entire life – our hobbies, careers and lifestyle generally involves taking on projects which have definitive beginning and ends (she is a graphic designer, I was a career project manager, training leader and facilitator though I am now transitioning to full-time social media).
We don’t see WellPreserved as a project but an entire group of somewhat related projects tied together by conscious and excitement about food and people’s involvement with it. We don’t see it as a single topic – eating out with friends, cooking, preserving, shopping for food, social media, meeting people, researching recipes, talking about food ethics, hunting, writing, designing and talking about food all feel like very different parts of our lives and not a single obsession. As cliché as this sounds, WellPreserved has become part of the fabric of our life and isn’t something squeezed into it – and it doesn’t generally squeeze things out (though there was a time that finding such a balance was difficult). We don’t consider ourselves foodies or bloggers – this is just something we do.
I write as often as I do because it’s easier (to me) than writing sporadically. I think if I wrote a ‘few times a week’ I’d start to forget to write and it would just disappear.
Our articles are generally written on the same day they are printed. I used to hold myself accountable to an 8:00AM deadline in the first year or so. I know that when we post early in the day that our traffic increases as a result – but the balance of ensuring life fits in is far more important these days. I try to think of what I’m going to write about at least 24 hours in advance so that the article can bounce around my head and it almost writes itself when I sit down. I try to make sure that I have the idea for the next days post by the time my head hits the pillow (coming up with a post idea and writing it are two entirely different processes and I’ve found it’s much faster to separate them with many hours between the two activities).
I write a lot of articles in my head. My commute can talk 30-60 minutes (depending on the day). I tend to think about work for the first half of my drive home and then shift to life and/or WellPreserved-type projects the rest of the way. These things don’t always make it to the pages and some take longer than others – the post on honey wine (a few weeks back) was a project I’ve been wanting to do for more than a year. The Tortillas were thought about, researched, created and blogged in less than 24 hours. I have no doubt that I will make steamed buns (something I’ve been chatting about on the FaceBook group) in the future but that’s likely to be months or more away was I want a proper mixer to give it a really good go.
I also have an emergency list of topics in case I come up blank. I’ve been wanting to write about what the different types of cheese knives are used for for more than 2 years – but I’m holding onto that one for a day when I come up with absolutely nothing.
Posts break into multiple categories – ones that require research are rarely written the same day. These are some of my favorite articles as they force me to learn a lot in a short period of time. Learning to use Twitter and Google as more effective search tools is an essential element of making the most of the time. Also knowing that I can’t research every article that I want to and working in journals (like this one) can be a big help.
My brain rarely rests; that’s both an awesome and horrible fate. I don’t believe I am ADD (though some may have diagnosed me as such) but my brain is never silent. The only times in my life that I can ever remember silence was during a brief stint when I spent a lot of time at the gym and lifted heavy weights. When pushing a heavy weight my brain would go silent and I would almost begin to laugh. If the television is on, I tend to be doing something else – cooking, reading, writing or surfing the Internet. Not all of my web time is food-based but it’s a dominant topic of my search.
I generally require little sleep (though that’s changing with age). I generally sleep 5-6 hours a night (when I was younger I would generally go with far less).
We don’t attend the amount of social events many people think we do. Family and friends think we’re out 7 nights a week and while that may be true sometimes, we’re generally pretty close to home (and with good reason – by the time I get home it’s after 7, we walk the dog, make dinner, eat it and it’s generally 9:00PM or later before we get to truly sit down and relax). We like to go out but are selective with our time as we’ve been poor at this in the past (and stretched ourselves too thin) and the resulting exhaustion isn’t fun. We try not to overcommit ourselves but still make the odd mistake.
I do the majority of our projects on a weekend. I will do the work of multiple posts in a single day (we made honey wine and root beer on the same day) although their articles are written later.
Our last item of finding time is trying to ignore the need for perfection and being willing to put ourselves out here and be willing to be wrong. I look at some of our previous articles and photos and cringe – but I also know that there was a life to live beyond simply writing about it and sometimes that’s just what it takes.
Beyond the ‘how’ of doing this is a larger question that probably explains a lot more to how we find the time – and that’s ‘why’ we do this. Although I have some ideas (including we have a lot of fun with it, it feels important, we love to be part of building and enjoying a community with others), I haven’t exactly figured that out yet. I do, however, wonder what would have happened if I didn’t sleep in on December 28, 2008 – my best guess is that we would have no blog at all.
How do you fit cooking, projects or blogging in to your life? What tips can we learn from you and each other?
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Well Preserved 