A question of balance.
Time. There just isn't enough of it. So, I'll make this a short post.
Nothing drives this fact home quite to the hilt as does a Monday morning. It is
when the fluffy free notion of time hardens like a rock, when life seems to be
its most bleak and coffee its bitterest. These mornings trigger the dark
moments of inner reflection when you realise that something has to give in
order to get back some of that fluffy free goodness.
We have all have these moments. Mine at the moment is the end of the school
year rush. It is a time for assessment, report writing (12,000 words thank you
very much), wrapping up the loose ends and if it were not for the endless box
ticking, more time would be spent reflecting on whether you had gotten each
child where you wanted them to be. Time, when teaching is like watching a
Slinky spring going down stairs. It is compact and then then stretches out and
then compacts again as it is pulled together ad then so on and so on. At the
moment it is crunch time.
So chances are that on some Monday morning commute, you have grimly
pondered where the ideal balance in life is, that point where the load of work
is acceptable to the amount of free time. We like to think of it as that
mystical point of equilibrium, of Ying and Yang, being bent over a barrel and
having breakfast in bed. The reality is though that unless you are a Windsor
Sax-Coburg-Gothe or a Greek member of parliament you will have to find some way
to balance drudgery and dollars.
To keep your balance, you must keep moving, at least so goes Albert
Einstein's quote of life being rather like riding a bicycle. Stop and
you'll fall over. Useful, true and accessibly inspiring enough that it often
makes an appearance on the hallowed walls of Facebook users on those bleak
Monday mornings when reading on the loo.
Like most of us who have reached the stage of life where quite
possibly we have lived half, or fairly near to half of our life or at least not
counting on that lorry taking us out on the way to work. That fluffy-goodness-type
of time really is of the essence and we just don't seem to have enough of it.
The only way to make it all worth it is to achieve that something called Life
Balance. But the point is that balance or equilibrium is infinitesimally
fleeting, and just like riding a bicycle without fairy wheels it is just a
series of averted falls.
Inbuilt into this notion of life balance and ultimately time-management is
that we just want to be lazy. It is in our DNA. It is the cornerstone of our
evolution and is the banner of our progress. Laziness defines progress as we
are always looking for an easier way to get things done and have always done
so: making tools, sewing skins together, agriculture and gunpowder are just a
few short cuts we have accomplished on the way to making life easier. Just
about every great thing we have as a species has that hint of laziness in
it.
Ever since that fateful Tuesday (it usually was a Tuesday after a bleak
Monday) millennia back in our nomadic drive when Tzork decided he had enough of
the constant roaming for game and seeds to eat. He really wanted to spend more
time his heavy brow-ed wife and child. He couldn't really have more than one
kid because two was a real drag. In his quest to have more of a life balance he
struck upon the idea to plant a few seeds and settle down. Most likely it was
his wife's idea but then it is His-tory isn't it? What could be better? He had come across a short-cut,
the very first #lifehack. No walking around chasing unpleasantly bristly
animals, just sitting and watching seeds grow. There now, for the first time
time he could watch his cute large fore-headed heirs play down by the stream,
and his equally hairy better half return with fresh berries from the nearby
thicket. This was I am sure he though the secret to life. This trail quitter
changed everything. Agriculture had arrived and allowed more time to guarantee
a food source, breed and argue about how to decorate the dwelling with your
wife who now had time for a pleasurable new hobby - nagging. This hastened
the development of fermenting grain.
Now that we are older, there always comes a point when you wonder whether
it is really all worth it. All jobs will have that unavoidable grind to them.
Tzrok found it out pretty quickly I am sure. Mondays will feel like Mondays do
and Fridays like Fridays. Of course we do like to challenge ourselves in
between Monday and Friday or at least we said we did during that interview,
where we made some largely fatuous statement about where we saw ourselves in 5
years time. Inevitably, though we try to chip away at the work side of the
deal, trying to get better or faster, or find more effective ways to do the
same work in less time. Commendably of course, but it always does point to the
idea that if given a choice, at least the most trustworthy and human of us
would like more time to just do less wok.
Time management is temporary, and is eventually unsustainable
It took me several years to figure this out. I had had enough of spinning
plates and trying to manage my time. I knew that I had to change how I viewed
myself through my job, and also the benefits it afforded me. I left finance and
chose to do something that I loved and had value. I hoped the rest would sort
itself out. A change of careers created the new balance that I sought.
But despite that, the time has come to make more changes. I don't want to leave
teaching by any means, but I want slightly different things, a little more of
that and less of this. I know full well that my life will change immeasurably
in the coming months and well...whatever balance I am striving to achieve will
fall hopelessly out of whack.
Cutting the dead wood and what have I done for me lately?
The biggest change to be made is how you view yourself through your job. If
you love it, great, but if you are in for the wrong reasons you will always
resent the time you will inevitably feel later as being misspent.
- Make a Not to
Do List . I am not sure who
said, this most probably my wife: with the exception of children, dogs and
potted plants, most things will continue just fine left unattended for
periods of time.
- What you don't do determines what you can do
- Be German about your time - get to the point. This applies to meetings, planning your day, phone calls etc.
- Spin less plates and let little bad things happen. Linked to the first point - spin what you need to spin.
- Perhaps this is my favourite and this is borrowed from Tim Ferris - If you don't have time - you do not have priorities
- Get rid of your TV or only watch what things that are genuinely interested in
The overall gist is to get rid of the trivial and unnecessary time
consuming things that just do not help.
No one likes a smug athlete...
Athletes, especially triathletes love to explain how
they manage their time, cramming in all the hours for training amongst work and
family commitments. The embodiment of commitment. Somehow they just do it. The
truth is though, they just give something up in order to pursue what they love.
That giving up of things happens unconsciously. Pretty soon, after work drinks
become less frequent and you only schedule to meet friends late on a Saturday
afternoon after you have ridden, eaten and napped. Eventually you don't even
meet those friends any more. Small changes that if you look at them are binary
in their simplicity. The key to understanding this in hindsight is that the
deadwood is cut away from doing something that is useful to what they
love.
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