My Fickle Relationship with Time

Time. It's a four-letter word. Some see it as a nasty word. Others see it as a word full of promise and possibilities. We all have a relationship with time, a relationship that is as individual and varied as each person. No other person can understand your relationship with time.

Myself... well, I've had a tumultuous relationship with time. There are periods where time and I get along quite fine. We work in harmony and I feel as if time is on my side. We are pulling in the same direction and things are getting done at an amazing rate. There are, however, other periods where time and I seem to work at cross-purposes. I sit and procrastinate. I fritter away long periods of time doing absolutely nothing of value. Time gets bored with me and flies away and I am left at the end of the day with nothing to show for my activity.

Case in point, I have been sitting here for about an hour (at my favourite Starbucks), waiting for inspiration to strike me. I have read the news, scanned my Feedly articles, researched a variety of odd topics and been left bereft of any topic.

I feel out of sorts. I know that this past week was not a productive one, at least in the field of writing. I did get a few other things done in other fields but... the writing is where I get stuck. When I get stuck with writing... other areas of my life grind to a halt as well. My to-do list, postponed from one day to the next gets longer and longer. I try to tackle the small things, but even those seem to take an inordinate amount of time. Time and I are working in different directions. I don't trust time. I am fearful of what will transpire if I give myself up to the writing. As a result, time turns up its nose at me, frustrated with my lack of purpose. It falls through my fingers, pooling on the floor and seeping into the cracks, never to be regained.

Time is a funny thing. It's not like money or material goods. We can't save it and hoard it for a future when it will be in short supply. We are given our daily dose of time, so much and no more. And yet time is a relative thing. From one day to the next, time can pass with dazzling speed or meander at a sedate pace. It is all in my perspective. Time doesn't really change... it is my perception of time that alters. I control time. Whether I choose to or not. My attitude, my mood, my feelings - all contribute to my sense of time.

If I believe a task will be onerous, I postpone it. I procrastinate. I put it off from one day to the next, from one week to the next. But while a task may be off my immediate to-do list, it is not off my mental radar. I know it is there, waiting for me in the future, ready to pounce. It saps my energy. The days and weeks pass and I devote hours and days to worrying about the task.

The ridiculous thing is that when I actually buckle down and tackle the task, I find it might take 5 or 10 minutes to complete. But how many untold minutes have I worried about the task? How much energy has been sapped from my psyche by this uncompleted task?

For months... since August actually, I have wanted to connect with the writer of a German book. I have postponed that task innumerable times, always with a variety of excuses. I didn't have her email address. My German was too sketchy to write. I didn't know what to say. A few days ago, I sat down, typed in her name and the title of the book. I found the publisher's website (which I had done months ago as well). I found the Contact Us page and wrote a two-line email to the publisher asking that they pass my email along to the author. I gave a one line synopsis of my interest in her book. Hit Send. Done. Total task time - 3 minutes. Total pysche time - months. ***head thumps down on desk***

I know this. I know this is how I operate. I know that incomplete tasks sap my energy. I know that unanswered emails drain my attention. Yet, I continue to sit and ignore them. It's too hard. I don't know what to say. It will be too complicated. It will take too long. And so I check the online news... or do some research... or tidy the house. Why??

There have been studies done on the benefits of delayed gratification. Sit a child down in front of a marshmallow. Tell the child that if they can wait 5 minutes before eating the marshmallow, they will get a second marshmallow. Watch what child does. Some children are great at delayed gratification. They wait for 5 minutes and happily walk away with two marshmallows. These same children go on to succeed in various areas of life. Other children can't wait. They figure that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. So they eat the first marshmallow. These children tend to struggle later in life. I am great at delayed gratification. But I wonder... would the same work for delayed "struggle".

I think that a task is going to be a struggle, so rather than tackle it, I postpone the struggle. I think that maybe it will get better with time (not true). I think that I will be better prepared in a day, a week, a month (not true). I think that I can't handle the struggle right now, so it would be better to handle it later. It's the reverse of the gratification scenario. I think it will be better in the future, but it really isn't. And in the meantime... I worry about the task, I mentally review the task, I postpone the task. See? I control time.

Getting Organized

Well, my little to-do list is still working well, although it does seem to end up that now a page is good for a week. I don't redo the list each and every day on a new page. So that seems to work OK too. What I'm finding a bit more challenging is organizing my schedule. I have a day-timer. I have a fold-out work schedule (on paper). I have my Outlook Calendar. Too many Calendars! I do like the day timer as it is easy to pack around and carry. Mind you, I know that nowadays most people have their calendars on their Blackberry or iPhone. I've still managed to avoid getting one of those, although I might not last much longer.

After a bit of dithering, I've started to use Google Calendar to keep track of my schedule, at least the big things. I can do things in different colours, which is important, as I'm a visual learner! I can see a week at a glance or a month or a year, which is nice as well. I can have different calendars on the same calendar - so my personal calendar, my work calendar, my list of birthdays, a friend's work calendar. I can show them all or hide some. Best of all, it can apparently be synced with Outlook Calendar, and is accessible on a Blackberrry or iPhone. So... let's give this a whirl and see how organized it keeps me!

Out of the Swing...

Ah well... so it goes! I had the best of intentions today to get on my bike and ride to my second favourite Starbucks and then head for a medical appointment, which was nearby. But... things didn't work out the way that I had planned. I ended up driving to my appointment and skipping Starbucks entirely. Then heading home and doing some work and then supervising the workmen who came to revamp our attic venting (bathroom fan ducting and laundry ducting). So, all in all, a day that reminds me that I can plan things, but sometimes I need to let things plan me. Or go with the flow. I did make it to Starbucks in the late afternoon, so everything did work out... But still, if my schedule becomes too rigid, it's never a good thing... not for me, not for my schedule, and not for the people around me.

So, it's a good lesson. Go with the flow. Don't get too attached to the schedule. And just do whatever it is that needs doing, in the moment. Sometimes it's a lesson that I need to learn over and over again, which means I haven't learned it quite well enough! A good reminder for me to just be in the moment.

To Do Lists

So, I'm still using my coil-bound notebook as my to-do list. It still works very well, although when I'm away a lot, I find that I just use one page for a whole week. I still like having the left page blank for comments and notes and appointments. That works well. Mind you, there are some items on my list that have been there since September, which means they are almost hitting 9 months old. Definitely time to complete some of them and clear some space in my life!

The other thing is this... being away a lot... I find that the to-do list for work gets longer and longer, as things start to pile up. Seeing it all as a big long list is kind of disheartening actually. I've read elsewhere, that it's a good idea to just focus on the top 3 things to accomplish in one day. Which makes sense to me. Rather than working a little bit on 10 things in one day and completing none of them, it would be far more satisfying to work on 3 things and complete all of them.

Sometimes that doesn't always work, as there always seem to be little extra things that pop up during the day. Emails from people. Requests from people. Things that need to get handled "now"! But again, if I only have 3 things to accomplish today, then it doesn't feel so overwhelming.

And of course, there is always the thing of creating the time for what I need to accomplish. Just be in the space of "more than enough time"... and see what can get done.

Time

Funny how it keeps coming back to time... or the lack thereof. There are only 24 hours in a day, for each and every one of us. Yet, some of us seem to get more done than others. Some of us have a different relationship with time than others. For myself, time seems to fall under the category called "never enough". Which isn't surprising, as that little phrase pops up in other areas of my life as well. I know I'm not the only one with a relationship to time based in scarcity. But there are other options too... Because time isn't the issue... it's the relationship I have to time that is the issue. Or more accurately, what I believe about time is the issue. If I think there is never enough time... then that is exactly how time is going to show up in my space. If I alter that belief about time... then suprising things might happen.

This week I have a lot to accomplish... and I mean A Lot! But if I start this week with "there isn't enough time for... exercise, grocery shopping, reading" etc... I'm in trouble before I even get out of bed. Far better to come at the week with a different belief... that there is a tonne of time available to me and that I can take whatever time I need for whatever I need.

I need to create the time for the things that are important for me... because nobody is going to hand me and extra 3 hours today... Or at any point this week... So, let's go for it and see what shows up!