Inspired by a co-worker of mine, a hockey mom woman with lots of energy, who balances a job, household and three kids. She said: “if you sit down after dinner, you’re lost”. Meaning, that if you want to get chores done or want to pursue a hobby in your evenings, sitting down and turning on the TV or computer means you won’t get anything done anymore untull it is time to go to bed.
I was wondering about this. I always assumed that if I was tired, I needed to rest, to relax. On the other hand, doing stuff sometimes seems to give me the energy to do a little more stuff. But energy isn’t limitless, and at times, NOT vegging out is just too damn hard.
How do Dopers deal with this? Is it possible for you to veg out just a little, and spend the rest of your evening doing what you wanted to do? Or are you, too, lost, the minute your butt hits the couch?
My night doesn’t start until 8:30 or 9:00. I might sit and watch TV for a bit, but then I’m up and doing stuff. When I had a girlfriend, I’d be on the phone with her until 10 every night, then I’d work on my hobbies until 12 or 1.
For me, once dinner is over, I’m ready for the day to be done. The only real chores that get done once dinner is over with is: putting away the laundry (folded and ready to go upstairs before dinner), and laying out clothes for me and my youngest for morning. But this is by choice.
If I have something I need to get done between the end of dinner and going to bed, I’ll set a kitchen timer for 15 minutes or a half-hour, chill out however I want, but then when the timer goes off, get up and do whatever else it was I needed to do.
This feeling in my brain of “when dinner is over, everything is over” comes regardless of how busy or non-busy I’ve been that day, and regardless of how much is left undone.
I have to get up at 7:15, but lately I’ve been up by 6 or so. The past couple of days I was up at 5:05. I rarely sleep in on the weekends. But last Sunday I was up at 5, and by about 6:30 I decided to take a little nap until… oh, 10:30 or so.
I’ll usually get a couple of naps on the weekends.
9pm to midnight is my time to rest and relax. I get irritated if I have to do chores during this time, and if too many of my evenings are “lost” to more productive pursuits I start to become unhappy because I feel I don’t have enough time to myself.
But, with respect, I don’t think that’s what she’s talking about, unless I’ve read the OP wrong. She’s not talking about people who are intentionally R&R’ing in the evenings, she’s saying that if you have other stuff to do and you allow yourself to sit down at the TV or the computer, the evening is shot in terms of getting that other stuff done.
I’m sure that’s not universal, but it certainly is true for me. It’s momentum, and especially when I’m tired if I lose that momentum it’s hard to get rolling again.
In answer to the OP, I can allow myself rest periods if: (1) I put a time limit on them (say, 10 minutes); (2) I don’t then start doing something that’s going to absorb me (flipping through a magazine will not, but starting to watch a TV show or cruising the Dope wll); and (3) I’m not overly tired to begin with. If I’m dog-tired then, yeah, if I sit down I’m probably not getting back up.
Once the TV goes on, all that happens is watching it, or sex, or some combination of the two. But there are a number of things that must/may happen before the TV goes on.
Taking a family walk
Supervising kids’ showers/bedtime routine
Having a glass of wine and talking with my wife about nothing in particular
Paying bills
Prep/plan current or upcoming house projects
Going through mail and discussing resulting issues and correspondence
Reading, either a magazine or one of the 4 books I’m in the middle of at any given moment
Playing piano or guitar
I’d say maybe once a week the TV goes on once my kids are in bed- 8:30-ish. The other 6 days, it doesn’t go on until maybe 9:30-10:00 or so due to one or more of the listed items. But once it does, I’ve clocked out for the day.
With a toddler at home with a bedtime of 9 it’s difficult to get any chores done.
So after dinner we relax, watch shows, play, go outside.
Once he’s in bed at 9 I do chores for an hour or so.
I do all my chores around the house on the weekends. Once I’m home from work I’m done for the day I cook dinner and watch TV. I pay my bill from work and I run all my errands before I come home but once I’m through that door I’m worthless. This has caused problems with working out so I have to do it before I get home or I’ll never make myself do anything.
By the way all of you people going to bed late are nuts. I’m asleep by 8:30-9:00 and up at 5:15. On the weekends when I can sleep in I still wake up by 6:00 and on long vacation I have been known to sleep it all of the way to 8:00 after several days of partying. If it wasn’t for energy drinks I could never function at bars.
Ehm, two of my biggest hobbies are reading and computer games. I tend to do both sitting down. Plus, after dinner is definitely not my most active time: I get much more done at 5am than 9pm.
That’s how I read the OP. And I’ve never thought about it - but…yeah.
Absent a crisis, once I sit down in front of the computer or TV … that’s it. I do not tend to get up, do the 18+ chores that I could be doing, take care of all of the little items, do any of the hobbies that can’t be done from in front of a tv set. Even though I’ll still be awake for hours, I am unlikely to be productively awake.
*We’re *nuts? It’s impractical to be asleep between 8:30-9:00 when you have two young children who don’t go to bed until around 8:15. The next couple of hours are usually the only time to get things done at home, plus I like to know my kids are asleep before I go to bed. And I get up between 5:30 and 6:00 every day too. I just don’t need that much sleep.
If I went to bed at 8:30, essentially I’d never do anything but work and sleep. Now THAT is nuts. I mean, I LOVE to sleep. I do it recreationally. But I like to do OTHER recreational things too, and I happen to be happier and more productive at night than I am in the morning. For me, getting up at 5:00a would be nuts, because I’m groggy and useless at 5:00a no matter what time I went to bed.
Yeah, sitting down after dinner is deadly. Once dinner is over and the kitchen cleaned up, it’s usually 7:30, and then I make myself get into something – woodworking, home repairs, errands, bill paying, research, etc. If I don’t, and flop onto the couch with the tube on, the best I can hope for after that is to do some reading. There’s no way I’m going to get up off the couch and go into the basement at 10:00 p.m. and start cutting dovetails. There are plenty of times that I’ll already be cutting dovetails at 10:00, and I might continue on till about 11:00, but that’s because I started at 7:30 pm. But to get up and start at 10:00? No way. As Jodi said, momentum is huge.
I get up at 6 am each weekday, and 7:30 am on weekends.
Before I had my ipod, yes. If I sat down at 8 PM, I was doing NOTHING except relax and sleep. Now, if I know I have some chores to do, I"ll put on the ipod to listen to music or a podcast while I’m doing the endless loads of laundry or emptying/filling the dishwasher.
