Ray Schafer
10-20-2008, 10:47 AM
After several years of hearing my wife say "when are you going to make ..." and my saying "When I get some time in the shop!" we took action.
We realized that most of the personal/free time that my wife gets is "scheduled." She has this event or that get-together ... book club, bunco, etc. So what we did is schedule my shop time!
We both use Outlook Calendar, so we put it on the calendar as and official scheduled event. I get the first Saturday of each month, and one full weekend each quarter -- the third weekend of that month. We marked it as a recurring appointment. If it has to be changed for some reason, we sit down at the computer and move it from one time to another.
Now that it is on the calendar, we treat it more formally. I still get some evening time, and time when she and the kids are busy doing other things, for some tinkering time.
Since we have taken this approach, I went from producing nothing in a year to building shop cabinets, an outfeed table, a bed, garage cabinets and lots of jigs and fixtures -- in 6 months.
Ray
We realized that most of the personal/free time that my wife gets is "scheduled." She has this event or that get-together ... book club, bunco, etc. So what we did is schedule my shop time!
We both use Outlook Calendar, so we put it on the calendar as and official scheduled event. I get the first Saturday of each month, and one full weekend each quarter -- the third weekend of that month. We marked it as a recurring appointment. If it has to be changed for some reason, we sit down at the computer and move it from one time to another.
Now that it is on the calendar, we treat it more formally. I still get some evening time, and time when she and the kids are busy doing other things, for some tinkering time.
Since we have taken this approach, I went from producing nothing in a year to building shop cabinets, an outfeed table, a bed, garage cabinets and lots of jigs and fixtures -- in 6 months.
Ray