 My life is too complicated. As happy as my life is, it would be happier, and much more productive, if it were simpler.
What complicates it most is that I'm trying to do too many things, and
hence don't have enough time to do them all properly. Often I don't even have enough time to think about
how to do them properly before I start to do them. I keep advising
other people: Don't try to do too much. Do one or two things really well. I need to start taking my own advice.
Like everyone else, I do what I must, then I do what's easy, and then I do what's fun.
The urgent stuff gets done, while the important stuff (the important
conversations, the important expressions of love, the important
creating of community) keeps getting deferred. We all need to have some
time for ourselves, just for fun, time to recharge, or we'll burn out.
Our world has two critical scarcities: Shortage of time (enough to think and
talk and understand what we need to do to make the world a better
place), and shortage of space (enough land to be home to Model Intentional Communities
that can help us experiment and learn a better way to live and make a
living). My biggest challenge for the next few months at least will be
striving to address these two scarcities.
The only way to address a scarcity of time is to stop doing some
things, to free up time for others. When I got sick eighteen months ago
I learned, of necessity, how to stop doing some things. I gave myself
time to heal, to do what was important instead of what was most urgent.
I learned to just say 'no' to urgent, unimportant things. I have to learn to do that again.
One way to do this is to allocate time in each day for things that
are important, and squeeze the amount of time allotted for urgent
unimportant things, to discover whether they're urgent after all, to
discover what will happen if these urgent things -- housekeeping,
responding to administrative messages, minutes of meetings, attending
meetings, polite but unimportant social obligations etc. -- just don't
get done at all.
So, for example, a 24-hour day might be allocated to the following important activities:
- 9 hours a day for sleeping and personal hygiene
- 2 hours a day for physical exercise -- running, meditation, working out, yoga, hiking etc.
- 3
hours a day for play -- learning things you love, having
non-competitive fun, just paying attention and being in the moment, and
expressing love and joy in different ways
- 3 hours a day for conversation -- not small-talk, conversations with intention (this time could include meal-times)
- 2 hours
a day for reflection -- thinking,
reading/watching/listening to actionable information and stimulating
entertainment content, and deciding, thinking ahead, considering what
it all means and what needs
to be done as a result
- 2 hours a day for creation -- writing, model-building, sketching, composing
- 3
hours a day for action -- first/next steps towards doing important
things, productive actions that make the world a better place
This leaves no time at all for urgent, unimportant actions:
- 0 hours a day doing work that isn't one of the above types of activities
- 0 hours a day for administration, paperwork, 'non-value-added' work
- 0 hours a day driving to and from places
- 0 hours a day shopping
- 0 hours a day waiting
- 0 hours a day for chores
- 0 hours a day for small talk
- 0 hours a day for
reading/watching/listening to mindless, unactionable stuff
Some
people spend their entire waking lives doing these urgent, unimportant
things, things they are expected to do. Thinks that everybody else does.
How do we stop doing these things? Here are a few ideas, things I'm working on:
- If
your work isn't about conversation, reflection, creation and action on
important things, be entrepreneurial and make work that is.
- Find someone else to do the administrative stuff -- some people actually enjoy it: for them it's play.
- Drive
less, or at least do other (non-distracting) stuff while you're driving
-- converse (hands free), record your thoughts, reflect.
- Buy
less, so you have to shop less. Buy stuff that lasts longer. Make it
yourself instead of buying (an act of creation, play, and sometimes
even exercise).
- If you have to wait, read, reflect, converse, meditate, or create while you wait. Don't just stand there.
- Own
less, so you have fewer chores. Find other things you can do while you
do whatever chores are left. Do them manually, so they count as
exercise.
- Swear off small talk. Instead, converse about
something important. Or pay attention and play (flirt, for example)
instead. Or dance and sing (creative and good exercise).
- Entertain yourself. Don't go to the movies or watch TV or read headlines. Improvise. Make something. Do something. Innovate.
- Share chores. They'll be done faster, and you can do other things together while you do them. Collaborate.
- Learn
to say 'no'. You can't be everything to everyone, and you can't do
everything. Clear everything off your Getting Things Done list that
isn't really important to you. All those e-mails awaiting a response
from you? Say 'thank you' if they're useful; phone or set up an
appointment if that would be useful; otherwise file them away forever
or delete them, done.
- Move
the important things closer together so you can do more than one of
them at a time. Find or found a community of people you love, work
with, and learn from all at the same time.
- Practice being
better at what's important: Learn to become a better conversationalist,
a better player, a better actor, a better thinker, a better reader, a
better lover, a better friend.
That's it for finding the time to do what's important. In future articles I'll look at how to find the space
for what's important (specifically, land for intentional communities
and space for Open Space), and how to find the people to do important
things with (as soon as I figure that out myself).
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
