Stitching Time: Week 1 of 2021

 

Welcome to the first 15 Minutes to Stitch Linky Party of 2021. February 2021 will mark ten years of me working to find even just 15 minutes of stitching time most days.  Why just 15 minutes?  That's from the statement "Anyone can do anything for just 15 minutes."  I have no idea where that came from originally.  If you search the Internet it's a common time management/life coaching statement. If you want to make changes to your life (add exercise, start organizing, learn to write) start by finding 15 minutes a day for your chosen activity. Most days, I sew for much longer than 15 minutes, but there are days the schedule is just so packed or my energy level is just so low, that 15 minutes is all I can manage.  But those 15 minutes really add up.  If that's all the time you have, over a week that's an 1.75 hours. You can do a lot in almost 2 hours.  

What counts as part of your 15 minutes?  That's up to you. For me it's anything that moves a project along. Some days that's actually sitting at the sewing machine, others it's playing with border options in EQ8 or playing around with label designs.  It could also be organizing your sewing room, cutting up scraps, picking fabrics for a new project, etc.  

How to track it?  I use Excel.  The spreadsheet I use has two sections. The first is just a running list with the date, day of the week and the activity or project worked on.  Like this:

Once the month is over, I just delete the Date and Activity entries, leaving the Weekday entry and start over with the next month.  Nada means I didn't get in my 15 minutes that day.  I don't keep track of how much time I sew, that's not as important to me as just getting myself into the sewing room. But you could certainly modify the sheet to track that.  

The rest of the tracking is just keeping up with the days per week, per month, and per year that I stitched.  Here's what 2020 looked like.

Those who've been following along for a while know I graph everything. Here's what 8 years of tracking my stitching time looks like.

I've tried running correlations with fabric usage and quilt finishes with no success. I'm obviously missing some variables in those comparisons as there doesn't seem to be any direct link between stitching time and those two outcomes. 

Whatever you decide to count or track, I hope you'll link up each week with how your efforts to find time to stitch worked out.  

I make a clean break at year's end.  So here's my metrics for 2020 and for the first few days of 2021. 

2020 

• 15 minute days/week = 5/5 days
• 15 minutes days/Dec = 25/31 days
• 15 minute days/2020 = 324/366 days
• Success rate = 88.5%

2021

• 15 minute days/week = 2/2 days
• 15 minute days/Jan = 2/2 days
• 15 minute days/2020 = 2/2 days
• Success rate = 100%

So how did you do this week at getting in your stitching time?  

1. Julie in GA 2. Ivani 3. maggie f 4. karen 5. Meloney 6. Chris in Canada

7. DI 8. Chrisknits 9. Marti 10. Amanda 11. Rose 12. Andree at Quilting & Learning

13. DawnyK 14. Melisa - Pinker n Punkin Quilting 15. Carol Andrews 16. Deana 17. Quilting Gail 18. Jennifer in Indy

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