Time is a strange thing
It feels ever present, infinite, like there is always more. Every day, you wake up, and you have the time that that day provides. Then, it happens all over again the next day and the next and the next, until you die.
There are the life changes, the great deadlines, the missed opportunities and of course the unexpected interruptions, but generally my life now seems to slip by unnoticed. When I was a younger man, I was terrified of this phase of my life, when everything felt like was standing still. The step I have yet to take, and that is perhaps bigger than I yet realise, is that my own growth and satisfaction needs to take a back seat to those of my children. I reflect often on this, and ask myself:
What do I need to do to make their growth easier and better?
Returning to the musings on time I opened with, I realise that rather than being an infinite flux, my time is limited, because these are their formative years. There are things I need to accomplish outside of my dedication to them, such as earning a salary and satisfying civic and household duties, that need to be done with the utmost efficiency so that what is left of my time I can freely dedicate to them. Younger me often left tasks undone for the morrow, knowing that “tomorrow is another day”, whilst adult me has learned that “the future is a foreign country” – at least it is so for me, but not for my kids.
In summary, time is far more precious and scarce than I had previously taken for granted, and in budgeting for its expenditure, it is important to have some sort of plan or idea.
My time budget
My work days mostly look alike. It’s easy to counter this statement by pointing to exceptions – those interruptions and unforeseen events which the mind latches on to as outliers in the distribution and remembers. Without a planned day’s activity, it’s hard to know how much of the things I intend to do are getting interrupted by the things I have to do. Some might say this is “living with intent”.
So, my time is divided into a few hours in the morning, and a few hours in the afternoon, interspersed with breaks as well as longer ones in which I have to go and get the kids from school, for example.
Putting some structure to those few hours in the morning and the afternoon has helped me to pack them densely with things I intend to do, and look back over the day at its end to determine how much progress was wrought.
I try to follow the spirit of the pomodoro method: intervals of intense concentration interspersed with short breaks. This helps me to see how much time I really have available. It’s quite difficult for me to estimate accurately what I can do in three hours, but I can more accurately estimate what tasks I can complete in 25 minutes. It is a more quantitative approach that helps me to break up my goals into smaller tasks and take a more directed approach to getting things done.
The process
In my experience over the last year, I can complete two full pomodoros in the morning and three in the afternoon; i.e. two full cycles of:
- 25 minutes of focussed uninterrupted work on a single task
- 5 minutes break in attention. A list of planned tasks picked from the day’s goals is written for the next 25 minutes.
- repeat 4 times for one cycle of work (pomodoro): 2 hours of real time.
- Longer 15 minute break between cycle for stretching, situps, coffee, whatever.
The first pomodoro is always about setting down my intent for the day. I have a list of expected deliveries set by my team which I am responsible for. These are the “dents in the universe” that I need to make, things that are measurable and observable by others. It is up to me to decide how to break these down into goals and tasks for the day. I therefore sit down for the first part of every morning to look at what I did or did not achieve based on my goals for the previous few days, and translate them into the goals for the day. Often goals are annotated with the number of times I have had to roll them over from the previous day, helping me understand what urgency to assign to them.
On a clean page of my journal, I write the date and goals for the day. No more than four goals are achievable in a day, so I am forced to prioritise.
It is not uncommon for me to let my team and manager know what my goals are for the day, although this is not a fast rule. It helps me stay accountable, but what really matters to them are the things I deliver, not the tasks I complete.
As each pomodoro completes, and I tick off completed tasks, I am repeatedly forced to check my daily goals and express what task of twenty-five minutes or less I want to complete in order to progress on the larger goal.
A return to values
My work costs a lot to my employer. I am extraordinarily privileged (compared to other potential “me”s) to be in my current situation, a fact which is not lost on me. Being grateful and mindful of this, I try to be consistently valuable to my employer - I want to be money well-spent. I bring my values to work, expressing them through my work and the things I do and make for the people that depend on me. I try to be consistent, reliable and and produce results of a high quality. These are not only good ways to keep my job, but also values I want to transmit to my children.
They say practice makes perfect. They say practice what you preach. They say be the change you want to see in the world.
At this point in my life, I try to adhere to these by appreciating the time left to me and doing what I consider valuable with it.
Hug your loved ones.