To ask how busy your life is?

[Planejane34]

Had friends who take 4 days to reply to a short message, or just don't reply at all. Understand I'm not a priority, I'm just curious to know how busy you are day-to-day and how much downtime you get.

On an average weekday I get up at 6:30, leave home about 7:20, get to work at 9. Work until 4, get a couple of breaks throughout the day. Twice a week tutor until 6, occasionally do other hobbies during the week, see my partner and family.
Have every weekend off. I 'only' really work 37 hours a week, and have no children.

I choose how to spend my weekends, I see my partner usually twice a week and family once a week, usually see a friend or a couple of friends every few weeks.

Work shifts so wake up times and bedtimes vary anywhere on the 24 hour clock. My shifts are 10.5 hours long and I have a half hour commute to/from work. In my work day I get a couple of breaks but they are at random times and random places. During my “at home” time I need to take the dog out, do any housework and general family admin. I work a minimum of 5/7 but often 6/7 days as I need the overtime to cover bills etc. Days off are spent catching up on stuff at home or helping parents. I rarely see friends but always make the effort to reply to messages as it doesn’t take long.

The difference may be that you don't have any kids?
Weekends aren't relaxing when you've got to juggle getting them to activities, parties etc.
It's just been half term so they're maybe juggle childcare too?

In my experience the friends who take ages to reply to messages, don't reply and/or never organise anything are the least busy. If you want something doing ask a busy person as they tend to use their time better. I'm wary of anyone that loves to talk about how busy they are.

Mine is absolutely bloody packed, from waking up at 4:30 as it's the only time I can work out to cleaning the whole flipping house around 10pm. I reply to messages though - I think it's more to do with personality. I have a type A, almost unhealthy obsession with inbox 0. I do dislike chatting for the sake of it though, so keep answers pretty short unless actually planning something/arrange a catch up.

I get up at 4.20 (I like the morning!) to do 15 mins of weights, get ready for work, make my lunch, empty dishwasher, do washing, eat breakfast. I wake my 4yo DD at 6am, we play until I leave for work at 7. My partner drops DD at nursery. I start work at 7.45am, I get a tea and lunch break but work with volunteers and am expected to socialise/be available during this time. I usually finish by 4.30pm, pick up my DD from nursery and get home about 5.30pm. We eat dinner which is either something easy or batchcooked at the weekend, then play/bath before DD goes to bed at 7.30pm. I then do any tidying, get bags ready for the next day and try to be in bed by 8pm. We do cleaning/batch cooking at the weekends, DD has a weekly gymnastics class and we usually see family every other weekend.

I'm awake for 530 I don't technically need to be until 630 but 530 allows me a relaxed coffee a few pages of my book catch my breath usually end up doing the dishwasher whilst making coffee perhaps put something in the slow cooker and a general tidy round.
Daughter wakes up around 630 - day care for 700 she has breckfast there.
Work anything from 710 to 730 by the time I get there and finish anything from 410 to 430
Home by 5
Daughter in bed by 630
We eat something about 7 - often a basic meal as I'm too knackered to be arsed to eat much.
Bit of TV and bed by 9.
I have high sleep needs and don't function well if I go much later.

I run my own business can work 60+ hour weeks one week and 30-40 the next depending on the contracts I have in.

I have 3 dogs, 2 grown up but living at home DS and a partner, we are renovating a home and love to socialise 2-3 nights a week and I go to the gym and classes 3 times a week.

So busy sometimes and less busy others. I can take a few days or a week to reply to a non urgent msg but then my whatapp is used for work as well so I tend to switch it off.

My children are all grown up so my days are simple, get up, work 8 am to 4 pm, often at home so no stress. . Don't work weekends. If I'm in the office leave at about 7am back home for 5 pm. I spend my non work time either reading, walking, or sleeping. Love sleep. Do a lot of cooking, everything from scratch. Go to the cinema a lot, study (PHD), but my absolute favourite thing is reading. It's taken about forty years to achieve zen like calm and it's lovely. (Always reply to messages.)

So on Thursday I woke at 6:30am, got children ready for school, dropped son at school 8:30am and continued to work, picked son up 3:15, walked dog til 4:15, then worked from home office til 6pm, then got dinner for children, then more work, then bath and bedtime routine for children, then worked from 10pm til 3am when I collapsed in bed and woke up friday 6:30am.

I don't always work til 3am. Sometimes I can get to bed at 10:30pm.

I have 3 dc and get information overload with emails from their different schools plus working 37.5 hours a week then, until recently, I was doing a post grad diploma. There’s times when I just can’t face replying to messages. It’s rare but I do get occasionally overwhelmed and wait a few days.

I'm not that busy. However, I have two teens who do a lot of sport and the timings of their sessions clash so I'm in various lift share chats. There can easily be 20 or 30 messages on those chats each day as logistics change. They need to be dealt with and responded to quickly and that can mean general catch up messages get pushed down the priority list.

Not a huge amount of downtime. From 5am to night it’s a combination of getting DC who is still a toddler up and ready for daycare or the day, full time work, commute, evening routine with DC. On the weekends we have full days with DC maybe visiting family or spending the day together. Down time is at night when DC goes to sleep, from about 6.30 to falling asleep time.

I can’t imagine not responding to text messages in a timely manner regardless of how busy the day is. I have my phone at work or close by through the day. Easy to grab and quickly respond to whatever has come my way.

I can sometimes leave a message for a day or two before replying.

It's not that I'm too busy but either

• I get distracted mid way through by dc request and forget to finish it
• I need to think about how to respond eg check with dp if he's free on a certain date/ waiting to confirm something before I can reply etc which causes a delay
• I see the message but don't have time to respond at the time, then forget

So not too busy, but quite disorganised.

I typically work 70 hours a week, care and support for 3 relatives. Garden and allotment. I volunteer once a week but that's not too onerous and have an exam coming up in summer for a level 3 qual I've been studying for.

I don't have time for much else although I don't have much need for sleep which is handy. I reply when I can to messages though I try not to leave it for a whole week

I have three kids including a baby who doesn’t sleep and a child with ASD. Older two of the kids have various hobbies that they need ferrying to as well as the usual parties etc. I work albeit part time currently only 25 hours a week but often have to catch up in the evenings and we use a childminder not nursery and older two kids only have term time school/nursery so all my time off work is spent covering school/childminder holidays and same for my husband. We are renovating a house so any spare time at weekends is spent doing this. We both have older lone parents who we see but also have to help out and as such we also have no real help with childcare as neither of them can manage three kids alone. We haven’t had an evening out together for nearly 6 years as we can’t afford a babysitter and the child with ASD wouldn’t really cope with one anyway. The only downtime I really get is when the baby wakes (many many times) during the night, and I’m trying to get her back to sleep, this is when I do all my life admin on my phone including food shopping, school admin, emails and online banking (I have perfected the art of using the light on the white noise machine to illuminate my face enough for Face ID to verify me for online banking log in!). However I’m always conscious that I don’t want to wake people up by messaging them in the middle of the night so I’m sometimes quite slow to reply to messages as it’s the one thing that I do on my phone that can’t be done overnight.

It’s very much related to ages and stages.

My friends are at various stages of life, most have teens and early 20’s children though some have primary age school kids as they were 40 plus when they had kids.

I am retired and have 2 days at 2 different voluntary jobs and 2 mornings walking with 2 walking groups. Lunch with a friend every week and also walk with DH for an hour 5 days a week, he is also retired.

I tend to reply as soon as I read a msg, if I don’t know the answer I will write thanks, wIll have to check etc. I avoid group chats and did not join the walking group ones.

I would also add that it depends what kind of messages you send. If a friend sends something short like “how’s things?” I might be able to quickly reply “good thanks; bit crazy! How are you guys?” But some people I know - mostly my mum and MIL and some older friends/relatives - have a tendency to write Watsapp messages that are more like emails/letters and contain several elements that you need to reply to (eg “Hi X yes we are well thanks. Lovely to see you too last week. That’s awful news about Johns cancer returning, please send him my best wishes when you see him. Yes please we would love you to visit again in summer but still haven’t confirmed work holiday dates so please don’t book trains yet”) and these take a while to type and also need some headspace to construct. I really try to reply to these types of messages but it’s honestly quite tricky to find the time. I dread seeing them to be honest. Are you sure you don’t send this type of message?!

I quite often don't reply but then I can also be the one who tries to organise things. I have a short attention span and get easily distracted, then I look at my messages and think "it's been 4 weeks, whoops". Then when we start messaging the reason we started messaging gets forgotten about (I.e trying to arrange lunch!) because we've got into a conversation about something else! It's a big contrast to my job because I'm super organised there and have to be as I'm a PA looking after multiple executives.

I have a friend who only ever replies or messages when it's something that affects her, usually when she's going through something. I'm reevaluating that friendship because it's not because she's too busy, she just doesn't have time for me and obviously doesn't want to bother her new friends with her shit life.

Up at 6.45 usually put a wash on, have a shower, empty dishwasher and get school bags and lunches sorted. School run then half an hour to myself before working 9 to 5.30. During day lunch break is scheduled to pick up from school - 2 different schools. After pick up is a combination of working, making dinner, and taking kids to their hobby or work x 5 nights per week until 9 - 9.30. Sometimes work at the weekend. If not, am catching up on household chores and driving kids around, homework and emotional support (1 needs a lot of support). It feels like my time isn't my own and I hate it. I reply to messages as soon as I can but sometimes I just don't have it in me.