Tranquility by Tuesday

Tranquility by Tuesday Plot Summary

Introduction

We all have the same 24 hours each day, yet some people seem to effortlessly create lives filled with purpose, joy, and tranquility while others constantly battle the feeling of being overwhelmed. The difference isn't about having more time—it's about how we perceive and use the time we have. When life feels like a never-ending circus act of spinning plates, with work demands, family responsibilities, and personal aspirations all competing for attention, it's easy to believe we simply don't have enough hours in the day. But what if the solution isn't about finding more time, but rather about changing our relationship with time? Through nine practical rules that calm the chaos and make space for what truly matters, we can transform our experience of everyday life—even on an ordinary Tuesday. These strategies aren't about perfect productivity or rigid scheduling systems. Instead, they offer a framework for creating moments of tranquility amid life's inevitable complexity. By giving shape to our days, planning our weeks intentionally, and protecting space for both meaningful work and rejuvenating play, we can escape the trap of constantly feeling rushed and discover a sense of time abundance that makes life feel rich and full.

Chapter 1: Give Yourself a Bedtime for Renewed Energy

Sleep is the foundation of a well-managed life, yet many adults have abandoned the concept of a consistent bedtime. When we track our time, we discover a curious paradox: most people actually get enough sleep quantitatively—averaging around 7-8 hours—but still feel chronically tired. The culprit is often disorderly sleep, with dramatic variations from day to day that wreak havoc on our energy levels and ability to function. Elizabeth Morphis, a professor at SUNY Old Westbury, experienced this firsthand while working toward tenure. With young children and a husband who commuted over an hour into New York City, she found herself constantly exhausted despite technically getting "enough" sleep. The problem wasn't the total amount of sleep but its inconsistency. Some nights she'd crash at 9:30 after putting the children to bed, while other nights she'd stay up until midnight working on research. This erratic pattern left her perpetually tired and struggling to make progress on her professional goals. When Elizabeth implemented a consistent bedtime, her entire experience of time changed. She calculated when she needed to wake up most mornings, determined she needed about 7.5 hours of sleep, and counted backward to establish a 10:30 PM bedtime. She set an alarm for 10:00 PM as a reminder to begin winding down. The results were transformative—not just in terms of energy, but in how she approached her days. With consistent, quality sleep, she found herself making better decisions about her time and experiencing greater mental clarity. The process of establishing a bedtime is straightforward: decide when you need to wake up, determine how much sleep you need (typically 7-9 hours for most adults), calculate your ideal bedtime, and set an alarm to begin your wind-down routine 15-30 minutes earlier. This simple practice creates a rhythm that allows your body to function optimally. As one participant in the Tranquility by Tuesday project noted, "Giving myself a bedtime was probably the least sexy but the most useful" of all the time management rules. Beyond the obvious benefits of increased energy, a consistent bedtime helps us think more strategically about our days. When we define the end of each day, we start to see that our time is both finite and abundant. We become more intentional about how we fill our waking hours, making conscious choices rather than simply reacting to whatever comes up. This mindset shift is the deeper purpose behind this rule—it's about taking control of your time rather than letting time control you. Remember that a bedtime isn't legally binding; it's simply a tool to nudge conscious decision-making. If you're enjoying a wonderful conversation or finishing a great book, you can choose to stay up later. The key is making that choice deliberately rather than mindlessly scrolling through social media until you suddenly realize it's 1 AM. By practicing this discipline daily, you build the foundation for all the other time management strategies that follow.

Chapter 2: Plan Your Week Before It Happens

Time, as hymn writer Isaac Watts once observed, is like "an ever-rolling stream" that bears us away. Days slip into the past whether we think about them or not. When life feels particularly turbulent, we often find ourselves simply reacting to whatever rocks or eddies spring up in our path, with little opportunity for course correction. To calm this chaos, we need to pause and think about how we'd like to spend our time before we're hurtling through it. Teresa Coda, a Tranquility by Tuesday participant, discovered the power of this approach during the pandemic. She and her husband had moved back to her hometown in Pennsylvania with their two little girls, both under age three. With limited childcare options, they switched off workdays and used nap times to charge through their to-do lists. The key to making this work was "being really clear about what I needed to get done, so I could take the best advantage of small chunks of time," Teresa explains. When you have only an hour here and there, "you have to go into those hours with the goal in mind. Or else an hour gets frittered away." Teresa began thinking through her priorities systematically during a designated weekly planning time on Friday afternoons. She honed her list down to her most important tasks, professionally and personally, and assigned these tasks to particular days. Within each day, she assigned specific tasks to the slots when her husband or mother had the girls, and bonus tasks to times when everyone would likely be sleeping. This strategic approach allowed her to be remarkably productive despite limited time. The process is straightforward: each Friday, carve out twenty minutes to think about the upcoming Monday-Sunday week. Create a three-category priority list: career, relationships, and self. For each category, list a few items—no more than a handful—that would most make you feel like you'd had a wonderful week. Mark time for these things on your calendar. Then assess what else you need to do, even if these tasks don't rise to top priority status. Look at what's already on your calendar and make sure you know all your commitments, with a quick glance forward at the next few weeks. While any designated weekly planning time can work, Friday afternoons offer unique advantages. There's little opportunity cost since most people are winding down anyway. Planning on Fridays allows you to make full use of Monday mornings for actual work rather than planning. You can upgrade your weekends by thinking about them in advance. Perhaps most importantly, planning on Fridays calms the "Sunday scaries"—that anxiety that comes from knowing complicated problems await you but not knowing exactly what you'll do about them. The deeper benefit of this rule is that it helps you approach your week holistically. You can commit to intermediate steps toward larger goals, anticipate problems before they become emergencies, and think ahead about what might be important. Most powerfully, regular weekly planning creates a way to communicate with your future self. You can capture future desires and push them several steps closer to fulfillment. Over time, you start to see that the future can be shaped—you can direct its course. This sense of control amid life's turbulence is the essence of tranquility.

Chapter 3: Create Daily Movement for Mental Clarity

The human body was built to move, yet many of us spend our days sitting. This sedentary lifestyle may be comfortable, but there's a tipping point where productivity starts to suffer. Research consistently shows that regular physical activity is as effective as pharmaceuticals for many conditions that sap our energy—from mild depression to insomnia to pain sensitivity. Exercise is also a natural stimulant; one study found that a five-minute burst of physical activity boosted self-reported energy scores from 3 to 9 on a 10-point scale. A corporate professional shared her experience during a talk I gave at a large campus. She had recently started working with a team located several buildings away, which meant hiking across campus multiple times daily for meetings. Initially, she saw this as a time management challenge. But almost as an afterthought, she mentioned the unexpected benefits: she arrived at meetings feeling more alert than most people do mid-workday, and some chronic stiffness she'd been living with had improved. She had suspected that moving more might help, but it never seemed to fit into her schedule—until circumstances forced it to. This insight led to the rule: Move by 3 p.m. To boost energy and make life feel more doable, commit to doing some form of physical activity for at least ten minutes in the first half of every single day. The activity can be anything—walking, push-ups, kettlebell swings, chasing kids around the yard. Traditional exercise like running or a fitness class is wonderful if it works, but if not, there's no need to get sweaty enough to require a shower afterward. The "before 3 p.m." part is strategic. Research shows that people who exercise regularly are more likely to do so in the morning because mornings tend to be more regimented. However, 3 p.m. is typically when energy levels hit their nadir during business hours. A little movement at this point can help you power through the rest of the workday without relying on caffeine or sugar. This rule has deeper implications beyond the physical benefits. To ensure you move by 3 p.m. daily, you have to think through your days strategically. You become like a general surveying the battlefield, identifying where there might be spots of usable time. This mindset has spillover benefits—if you can spot or create space for a ten-minute walk, what else might you engineer? Fundamentally, you are in charge of your time, and a daily movement break reinforces this truth. Participants in the Tranquility by Tuesday project found creative ways to implement this rule despite busy schedules. Some walked during audio-only work calls or while their children played. Others turned up the intensity on normal activities, like running around the yard with kids or tackling yard work with more vigor. The key insight is that there's always a way to fit in at least ten minutes of movement, even on the busiest days. As one participant noted after finding ways to exercise while visiting her brother in the hospital: "There's ALWAYS a way to exercise." The results were impressive. Participants saw a steady increase in their sense of having enough energy for what they needed or wanted to do. Agreement scores for the statement "Yesterday I had enough energy to handle my responsibilities" rose significantly, even for people who were already exercising regularly. About 20 percent of people in the study moved all the way from disagreeing that they had enough energy for their busy lives to agreeing that they had enough energy—over just nine weeks. Remember, exercise doesn't take time—it makes time. The energy boost from regular movement will pay dividends throughout your day, helping you accomplish more with less effort and greater focus.

Chapter 4: Build Habits through Weekly Frequency

Leah Burman had figured out a good rhythm for life with little kids. This Maryland-based software developer and Agile coach used to exercise around 5:30 a.m. most mornings before work. She and her husband Ian, a collegiate athletic coach, would spend time together in the ninety-minute slot after the kids went to bed (8:30 p.m.) and before Leah did (10 p.m.). But as her children grew older, this schedule no longer worked. The preteen Burman children stayed up as late as their parents, and Leah had to start work at 6 a.m. to accommodate school schedules, which "killed my morning workout routine." When Leah tracked her time, however, she discovered something important: she wasn't exercising "never"—she was exercising "not as much as I want." She lifted weights on Saturday and went for an evening walk with friends midweek. This realization points to a life-altering distinction. There's a big difference between "never" and "not as much as I want." The latter invites incremental changes that can, over time, transform a schedule and our entire attitude toward life. This insight leads to the rule: Three times a week is a habit. Aiming to do something daily—seven days a week, or even five—can be challenging. But for many activities, daily isn't necessary. Things don't have to happen daily, nor do they have to happen at the same time every day, to count in our lives. Anything that happens three times a week counts as happening regularly. For Leah, this meant she didn't need to wake up at 4 a.m. Monday through Friday to fit in weightlifting. She could do her routine on both Saturday and Sunday mornings when the house was still quiet, plus on her work-from-home day, consciously substituting that time for her commute. That would be three times right there—meeting the definition of a habit. Similarly, for couple time, she and Ian identified three different opportunities: their weekly lunch at home, an evening out at a neighborhood place, and weekend conversations on their bedroom porch. The power of this rule lies in escaping the twenty-four-hour trap. When we view our lives in days, doing something once a week means six out of seven days you didn't do it. Most nights you go to bed feeling like you didn't achieve your goals. But with the "three times a week is a habit" mindset, we look at time more holistically and compassionately. We give ourselves credit for what we are doing and look for little ways to scale up, without the pressure of aiming for daily. This shift in perspective has profound implications. With 168 hours in a week, we quickly see that "full-time" work doesn't take anywhere close to the full quantity of our time. If you work 40 hours and sleep 56 hours (8 per night), you still have 72 hours for other things—almost twice as much time as you're working. This abundance mindset helps us see that we can make time for what matters. Tranquility by Tuesday participants embraced this rule enthusiastically. One woman wrote that "Just this one idea—if I do something three times a week it is a habit—has really made me remember that, yes, I am still a person who reads! Who pursues fitness! Who makes home-cooked meals! Who spends meaningful time with my husband!" She might not have been doing those things as often as she used to, but "if I am finding three times a week to do something, it is a habit or a hobby or a PART OF MY IDENTITY." The message is clear: Success is possible, even in the midst of a complex and occasionally chaotic life. You don't need to wait for some less-hectic future time to become the person you want to be. With a different perspective, and a focus on doing what you can, you can be that person now.

Chapter 5: Protect Your Time with Deliberate Adventures

Certain days stand out in memory more than others. I've thought many times about a late June day in 2006 when my husband Michael and I were hiking in Norway. What began as a popular summer trail turned treacherous when the weather suddenly changed. As we ascended a stone ridge, our summer day turned cold and rainy. At the peak, the rain transformed into a blizzard, and we found ourselves lost in a snowfield until we encountered some equally lost Norwegian soldiers with a compass. Those few hours of gripping rocks and being lost in summer snow are carved in my memory, while I can barely recall what happened between yesterday's lunch and dinner. Why? Because intensity in any form creates deep memories. Our brains hold onto what nudges us from complacence. Even more intriguing, our sense of how swiftly time is passing is shaped by how many memories we form. When we have more memories of any given period, time feels longer. This phenomenon explains why time seems to accelerate as we grow older. Youth features much novelty—new schools, cities, jobs, loves—creating a swift pace of memory-making that makes time feel expansive. Middle age, however, lists toward routine. Each weekday can feel like the last, with the same chaos of getting kids on the bus, slogging through meetings, and returning home to dinner and bedtime routines. To counter this effect and create a sense of time abundance, we need to consciously introduce novelty into our lives. This brings us to the rule: One big adventure, one little adventure. Each week, aim to plan one larger adventure (something requiring a few hours) and one smaller one (taking just an hour or so) into your schedule. These adventures don't need to be exotic or expensive. Looking at my time logs, big adventures have included family beach trips, baseball games, and orchard visits. Little adventures have included taking a child for sushi lunch, seeing an unexpected art exhibit, or exploring a new garden. The key is that these activities are outside your normal routine and create memorable experiences. This rule has several benefits. First, it reinforces the weekly planning habit with a focus on enjoyment rather than just obligations. Second, it builds regular doses of anticipation into your mental landscape—you're not just waiting for vacations to do interesting things. Third, it shows that even small bits of time can create memories that expand our perception of time. Tranquility by Tuesday participants embraced this rule enthusiastically, despite initial concerns about finding time. They planted apple trees, participated in virtual improv shows, organized first post-pandemic playdates, and took sunrise walks during work trips. Many noted that while these activities "weren't so out of the ordinary," the act of planning them "definitely made them happen." The biggest challenge was overcoming inertia in the moment. As one participant noted, "It's easier to not do things than to do them." When Wednesday evening arrives and you're tired, it's tempting to skip that planned visit to the art store and drive straight home. This is where understanding the three selves comes in: the anticipating self who looked forward to the adventure, the experiencing self who must actually do it, and the remembering self who will look back fondly on the memory. To overcome resistance, picture yourself on the other side of the experience. In a few hours, would you prefer to have the memory of those lights around the ice skating rink reflecting against the dark sky, or would you rather have stayed home? Most likely, you will be happy to have done the adventure, and will enjoy vast chunks of it too. As adventures stack up over time, life changes. Every day feels full of possibility. This mere sense of possibility leaves you open to more adventures, creating a virtuous cycle that makes time feel richer and more abundant. As one participant wrote, "Having adventures built in my schedule gives me a sense of time—'the week in which I did this and that'—in comparison to the weeks that just pass by similar to the ones before."

Chapter 6: Designate Personal Space in Your Schedule

Hannah Bogensberger has a busy life. She works full-time as a software engineer in Seattle, has three children who were all under age six when we spoke, and her husband is an ICU nurse. Yet on any given Tuesday, you could find her eating a quick dinner after work, then driving five minutes to play tennis with her two sisters for an hour. This simple weekly commitment has changed her perspective about her schedule, making her more relaxed and making time in general more joyful. "I'm not great, but it's fun, and it's something I look forward to," she says. Physical activity combined with laughing with people she's known since childhood provides a powerful mental break. "During the activity you're so focused on it you're not thinking about the to-do list and other stresses in life." The first time she returned home after this bout of tennis tranquility, her husband told her, "You look like you're glowing." This experience illustrates the power of Tranquility by Tuesday Rule 7: Take one night for you. Building a career and raising a family are meaningful activities, but they require a lot of energy. To do our best, we need time we can count on to recharge, apart from these obligations. So each week, take one evening (or an equivalent block of time) off from family and work responsibilities and do something that makes life feel meaningful and fun. Ideally, this time features a commitment to an activity, like playing on a softball team, being part of a community drama troupe, or, like Hannah, going to a regular meet-up with specific people. Your commitment to these other people provides accountability, giving you a reason to go even when life gets busy. When this activity happens at the same time every week, it becomes officially "your time." You don't need to ask permission or work around others' schedules. If it's Tuesday, you're going to your tennis game. I developed this rule from my own experience singing in community choirs. After moving to New York City in 2002, I joined three ensembles as a way to get my work-from-home self dressed and out of the apartment. After starting a family, I winnowed my involvement to one choir that met every Tuesday night. With an apartment full of little kids and a husband who worked long hours, I needed this time away. Tuesday stayed as my night "off" for four years, and when we moved to suburban Pennsylvania, I eventually found a new choir that rehearsed on Thursday nights. Many people resist this rule, citing childcare challenges or work demands. But there are practical solutions. In two-parent families, each parent can cover the other's night off—an explicit quid pro quo that's not only fair but wise, as relationships are more satisfying when both parties feel supported in becoming their best selves. Single parents might swap with friends or neighbors, or find activities that include childcare options. Those with unpredictable work schedules can look for the patterns within the unpredictability or use weekend mornings. The deeper challenge is often psychological. Some people are deeply invested in the idea that their families or workplaces would not function in their absence. This is arrogance in disguise—or fear, which is the flip side of the same coin. It's clinging to the idea that only I can do the things I do. Without me, everything will fall apart. But this is almost universally false. Children would eventually sleep. The dirty dishes would get cleaned. Colleagues would figure out what you do or do something else. Being willing to let go of this narrative is liberating. Your partner will do things differently, and that's great. Your employees will come up with amazing ideas. Your community can support you. When we don't need to micromanage every minute, life feels a lot more tranquil. The benefits of taking one night for you extend beyond the immediate pleasure. It reminds you of your identity apart from work and family responsibilities. It gives you something to look forward to during tough moments. It helps you manage your energy throughout the week. And it demonstrates that time is elastic—it will stretch to accommodate what we truly wish to put into it. We don't build the lives we want by saving time here and there. Instead, when we build the lives we want, with space for what feels life-giving, we discover that time can hold a lot more than we might have thought.

Chapter 7: Batch Small Tasks to Reclaim Focus

Some five hundred pages into War and Peace, Prince Andrei encounters a timeless problem. This cerebral aristocrat has big ideas for reforming the Russian military and joins an important committee. But as he goes from appointment to appointment, he finds that "the mechanics of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be on time everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy," Tolstoy writes. "Indeed, he was so busy for whole days together that he had no time to think about the fact that he was doing nothing." This passage resonates because we've all experienced how whole weeks can disappear into a general frenzy of stuff that must be done—signing forms, checking logistics, scheduling meetings, and preparing one day for another. We feel incredibly busy, yet it's hard to understand what progress has been achieved on our personal or professional goals. The curious part is that, according to time diaries, much of this busyness doesn't actually take much time. A few calls, a few forms, a few responses. We often spend more time agonizing over these tasks than actually doing them. The bigger problem is that these small tasks provide the satisfaction of being obviously "done," unlike the important things in life that deserve time but don't offer immediate rewards. The lure of easy accomplishment can chop up the day and make us feel like we're making progress when we're not. The solution is: Batch the little things. Designate a small chunk of time to tackle those things that must be done but aren't your top priorities. This could be an afternoon half-hour during the workday, a bigger blast on Fridays, or a ninety-minute chore and errand blitz on one weekend day. When a small task occurs to you, don't just do it—put it on the list for your batch processing time. This rule has two important effects. First, it forces prioritization. If you give yourself one hour for small tasks, you won't deliberate over an unimportant response. Tasks expand to fill the available space; when we give them less time, they take less time. Second, it keeps little tasks from always being an option. You know there's a specific time to order that present or call your dentist. This helps you protect time for focused work, relationships, and rejuvenation. Implementing this rule involves six steps: 1) Learn to identify small tasks by tracking what you do for a day or two. 2) Determine how much time you need—most people spend one to four hours weekly on small tasks. 3) Identify times for batch processing and anticipate challenges. 4) Start writing things down instead of keeping them in your head. 5) Match the right work to the right time—don't use your most productive hours for small tasks. 6) Find a system that works for you, even if it's not perfect. The biggest challenge with this rule is that it interferes with ingrained notions of productivity. We like to get stuff done and cross things off lists. Many people cite the "two-minute rule" from productivity literature—if a task takes two minutes or less, do it immediately. But this approach has three major problems: tasks often take longer than estimated (the "Task Hydra" effect), small breaks can turn into long distractions (the "Rabbit Hole"), and easy tasks provide a way to avoid difficult work (the "Procrastination Siren"). A better approach is what one reader called "the three-hour rule." Each day, she would spend a few minutes planning her workflow, then from 9 a.m. to noon she would go silent—turning off notifications, closing her inbox, and focusing completely on her big problem of the day. She would emerge at lunchtime and spend the rest of the day on calls, meetings, and administrative work. By following this approach, she still completed all her small tasks but also made progress on major projects. Tranquility by Tuesday participants who tried batching the little things saw immediate benefits. They made more progress on their priorities when they weren't constantly interrupting themselves. One person reported that this rule improved focus because "it felt like I was scheduling the to-dos instead of being interrupted by them." Another enjoyed being able to "say to myself, there is a time designated for that, and it's not now." Over time, batching the little things can flip the entire narrative of how we approach our days. We're no longer squeezing in the good stuff amid everything else. We're doing what energizes us first and confining the little things to the time we choose to give them. As one participant wrote after trying this rule, "I think I save time but mostly I think I change how I feel about work." Time feels lighter when you don't constantly think you should be doing something else.

Summary

The Tranquility by Tuesday project demonstrated that these nine practical rules can significantly improve our relationship with time. Participants' time-satisfaction scores rose by an impressive 17 percent from the beginning to the end of the study. They felt more in control of their schedules, wasted less time on things that weren't important to them, and experienced greater joy in their daily lives. These improvements persisted even months after the project ended. What makes these rules so powerful is that they work together to create a new mindset about time. As one participant reflected, "Overall, it's led to a more intentional effort in how I spend my time—primarily in getting past the sense that my life was an unending to-do list." Another noted, "I'm most proud of changing the story that I tell myself. I do have time for the things that are important to me and time for fun too." When we shift from a perception of time scarcity to time abundance, everything changes. Start today by implementing just one rule—perhaps giving yourself a bedtime or planning your week on Friday. Then gradually add the others. As the habits build, you'll discover that tranquility isn't about having a perfect schedule, but about creating a resilient one that can weather life's inevitable chaos while still making space for what matters most.

About Author

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Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including:The New Corner OfficeOff the ClockI Know How She Does ItWhat the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast168 HoursLaura is also the author of a time management fable, Juliet’s School of Possibilities and another novel, The Cortlandt Boys, which is available as an ebook.Her 2016 TED talk, "How to Gain Control of Your Free Time," has been viewed more than 5 million times. She regularly appears in publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Fortune. She is the host of two weekly podcasts, Before Breakfast and The New Corner Office and she is the co-host, with Sarah Hart-Unger, of the weekly podcast Best of Both Worlds. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and five children, and blogs at LauraVanderkam.com.

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