Tranquility by Tuesday Quotes

“Planning one big adventure and one little adventure each week can make life feel like less of a grind. But it’s not the only way to lighten up, and many of us could use a lot more cheer in the daily experience of our hours. So, after you’ve gotten into the rhythm of building in adventures, try adding another component: some weekly note of whimsy too. Whimsy”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“can change the experience of a Tuesday, as you stare out at the summer sky, the stars, and the fireflies punctuating the darkness like little adventures can punctuate time.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Adventures even shifted people’s perception of themselves. They were adventurous! “Time stretches and the inner narrative changes,” one person wrote. Perhaps life doesn’t have to be all toil; perhaps adulthood isn’t defined by the tedium of watching the clock. One person wrote of trying on this intriguing new feeling that “we were the kind of people who do fun stuff.” Another welcomed the chance to think about “taking up space for joy in my own life and in my family’s calendar—like, I get to play too! My”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Yes, the night would take energy. But really, what was I saving my energy for? If you want to do something, most likely you will be happy to have done it. Probably you will enjoy vast chunks of the adventure itself too.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“One big adventure, one little adventure” rule. Often, happiness takes effort. We’ll return to the concept of “effortful fun” in Chapter 9, but for now, we just need to remember that making memories requires novelty or intensity. Both of these can push us outside of our comfort zones, and might involve a little anxiety. If we let mild discomfort dissuade us, we will cut ourselves off from many things that will make us feel, looking back, like we have escaped the slog and led a rich and full life.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“know that discipline isn’t exactly a fun concept, but this skill of picturing yourself on”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“But honestly, you don’t need to look years into the future to change your decision rubric. Often, very little stands between us and being on the other side of something. We’re talking hours, not years. The essence of discipline is recognizing that this mild discomfort tends to be a small price to pay for the upside to Future You. Putting your feet on the cold floor when the alarm goes off in the morning isn’t easy, but if you’ve returned from your morning run charged up for the day every other morning when you’ve gone for a run, most likely Future You will experience this same energy boost. You just have to picture yourself forty-five minutes later—or even experiencing that runner’s high fifteen minutes into your sunrise run—and push through.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“the abstract, our brains consider our future selves to be strangers. We’re naturally less concerned about future needs than current ones. But if you actively picture Future You, this tendency shifts, and you can make better decisions. Some research has suggested that when people see renderings of themselves at future”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“To qualify as an adventure, something needs to be enjoyable, awe-inspiring, meaningful, or at least generate a really good story for parties. All of these are worth experiencing in life alongside the wine-and-YouTube routine. So I employed my favorite mental trick that makes anything tough more doable: Picture yourself on the other side.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“We can see the tension here. The anticipating self gets to don the identity of “cool mom who is going to take her kids ice skating.” The remembering self gets to enjoy the memory. It is the experiencing self who actually has to get up off the couch, get misdirected by her GPS to the bus circle above the rink parking lot, and fumble with the change machine to score quarters for her shoe locker rental. This can seem like an unfair division of labor.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“autobiographical narrative running through our brains, is really three selves. There is the “anticipating self,” who looked forward to that ice skating trip, the “experiencing self,” who would do it, and the “remembering self” (a concept Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman popularized in his research), who would look back fondly on the memory of those kids zipping around on the ice.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“As I pondered street parking on roads covered with snow drifts, and getting four kids into rental ice skates, and figuring out what we would do with our stuff, the whole thing felt like a lot of trouble. Why not just pour myself a glass of wine and read a magazine? I follow a great many minimalist-focused Instagram accounts that would recommend such an evening as restorative self-care. My house was nice and warm. Everyone would have been content to watch YouTube all evening. But I knew that was my present, experiencing self talking. The “self,” as we think of the”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Inertia is always a little bit of a challenge,” one person wrote. “It’s easier to not do things than to do them.” Another person dispatched with potentially conflicting work obligations, but then succumbed to the temptation to do “nothing” once the moment arrived: “I’m such a creature of habit it was hard to deviate from the norm.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“The question is just how much. One big adventure and one little adventure creates a good balance. The weekend can feel memorable, and still not come close to being exhausting.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Started a wine club with friends, which this participant described as a “book club without books.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Before anyone complains that they cannot fathom weekly excursions to another continent, let me clarify some definitions: A big adventure means something that requires a few hours—think half a weekend day. A little adventure could take just an hour or so, and fit on a lunch break or a weekday evening, as long as it is something out of the ordinary.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“You have to think about each day’s landscape—both workdays and days off—and where there might be spots of usable time. You become a general, surveying the battlefield. What can move? What can’t? What logistical problems must be solved as you march through your hours?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“One person confessed to an actual “horror vacui”—that is, a fear of leaving empty space. While I was surprised by the fancy phrase (it turns out to be an art term), I’m not surprised by the impulse. When life is packed full, it can feel wrong to leave time open. There is “so much to do, so little time,” one person said, and so it “feels slightly unrealistic to get everything done and keep slots clear.” One person wrote of the “Social pressure to accept meeting invitations and feeling like it’s wrong to decline things when you technically have nothing else going on.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Resilient schedules help us see time as abundant, not scarce.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“So here’s my take: If you are fantasizing about a spa day or an uninterrupted cup of coffee, please schedule these things into your life. And then create back-up slots too. I promise it will all fit. As you build the habit of creating a resilient schedule, there will be fewer crises, and more space will open up. Then you can use this space however you want.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“I find this doable if I “plan tight, then plan light”—a mantra that many Tranquility by Tuesday participants reported finding helpful. This means designating times on Monday and Tuesday for all of the week’s high-priority tasks. The minutes at the beginning of the week will feel a little full, but this is balanced by leaving the schedule more fluid later in the week. Any must-dos and want-to-dos should”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Just as an outdoor graduation ceremony needs its own specific rain date, the most important activities in your life need specific back-up slots. That said, creating specific back-up slots can get unwieldy as the priorities stack up. We also don’t always know, during Friday planning, everything we’ll need to do by the end of the next week. So here’s a practical shortcut for this rule: Get in the habit of leaving regularly scheduled open space in your schedule. That”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“How to build a resilient schedule Creating a back-up slot for the things that matter starts with figuring out what matters. I asked Tranquility by Tuesday participants to think about things that were important to them but had a tendency to get bumped from the schedule. Maybe it’s a Saturday-morning long run with a friend that keeps getting canceled because of rain or complicated family schedules.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“What challenges, if any, affected your ability to do this activity three times this week? How did you address these challenges? Did you need to modify this rule to work for you? How? How likely are you to continue using this rule in your life?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Looking forward to the next week, when could this happen? List at least three times. What obstacles might prevent you from doing this activity three times a week? How can you address these challenges? Implementation questions: What activity did you choose to focus on three times this week? Did you spend more time on your chosen activity this week than in previous weeks? If so, how much more time did you spend on it? What was the impact of aiming to do this activity three times per week?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Your turn THREE TIMES A WEEK IS A HABIT Planning questions: List some activities you’d like to do more frequently in your life. Choose one specific activity to focus on for the next week. When did you last do this activity?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Life won’t always work as anyone wishes. That’s the reason for the next chapter, which talks about creating a resilient schedule. An ideal schedule will also have to change over time as life changes. But if you know the ideal schedule, at least for now, then you can make decisions with that schedule in mind. As your experienced time gets closer to your ideal time, you’ll be happier. That’s a great thing to experience—as many times per week as possible.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“I’m guessing you’ll find the same thing as well. So after you’ve tracked your time, try creating your own realistic ideal week—one that acknowledges your responsibilities, but shows you at your best. Pull out a blank calendar (I’d suggest a spreadsheet with all 168 hours of the week). Put in what you’d like your week to look like. Ask yourself: When would you wake up on various days? What would you do in the mornings? When would you work? What would you like your workdays to look like? How about your weekday evenings? What would you do during a realistic, ideal weekend?”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“If you take nothing else from this book, I hope you remember this: Success is possible, even in the midst of a complex and occasionally chaotic life. You do not 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.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters

“Beyond the sheer pleasure of doing chosen activities more frequently, people liked this rule’s focus on making success doable. Three times is a very specific number—helpful for those who in the past had just wanted to do an activity “more”—and it is also achievable in a busy life. Many participants confessed to “all or nothing” thinking that had diminished the pleasure of their chosen activities in the past. “I felt like I was actually choosing to do the thing that feels life-giving to me, rather than lamenting the fact that I’m not doing it,” one person wrote.”
― Laura Vanderkam, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters