3 Keys Thursday: 3 Things to do on a Snow Day

Today, I declared a snow day. The college where I work has yet to follow suit but, in light of a forecast with 100% probability of precipitation during my scheduled classes, I canceled them pretty much at the first sign of a snowflake. Not only am I a snow chicken, but I have a lot of students who commute and I didn't want my class to be the reason they were on the road.

So now, a beautiful, empty day stretches out ahead of me -- a beautiful, empty day with a lengthy to-do list, that is. I could double down and see just how much I could cross off that list. Or, I could practice a little balance.

Guess which one I'm opting for.

Sometimes, time management is as much about taking down time as powering through. I have every intention of tackling my list, but a snow day is a gift -- found time -- and I intend to treat it as such, incorporating these three things into my snow day to-do list.

Sleep. If you're a person who practices good sleep hygiene -- going to bed and getting up at the same time each day, getting seven to eight hours of sleep each night -- you might not need to add this to your list. I am not that person. The best part of a snow day, for me, is rolling over and going back to sleep.

Do something intentionally. When our days are packed, we often blaze through them, doing what we need to do and not paying much attention to most of it. Days that are more slow-paced can remind us to take things -- or at least one thing -- slowly, paying attention to what we are doing instead of flying through it on autopilot.

Do something you've been putting off. I made progress on the piles in my family room the other night, but they're not gone yet. Nor is the mail pile on the kitchen counter or the "stuff to get to" on the dining room table. I won't get to all of them today, but I'm determined to eradicate at least one of them. I also realized the night before last that I hadn't set November goals yet. Perhaps the middle of the month would be a good time to tackle those.

I'm not naive enough to think that everyone gets a snow day, or that snow days for parents of school-aged children look anything like mine. But today's snow day was one of my own creation, with a major assist from Mother Nature, reminding me that we don't always have to wait for snow days to drop themselves into our schedules. Some days, we can create a "slow day" of our own.

And we don't even need an assist from the weather to make that happen.