OUR VICTORIAN NOVEL
“That void interval which passes for him so slowly . . . that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends.”
—CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Productivity thinking has its problems. And we’ll talk about those in just a moment. But, nevertheless, we need it. It’s really the only tool that early 21st-century people have fashioned so far to address the unique time challenges of living in our particular historical moment.
Nineteenth-century people, for instance, had a different time problem. Or at least ones of certain social classes did. If you were upper class and didn’t work at all, or if you were middle class and worked during the day and then came home to your candlelit home to spend each long evening, you had the problem of too much time.
Thus, the invention of the Victorian novel. Those long books full of long sentences were perfect for filling the long hours that stretched before you when you had servants to do all the housework; no TV and no social media and no gym; relatively little responsibility for raising your own children; and quite possibly a spouse whom you had little or no interest in hanging out with.
We have to stop thinking of productivity as a buzzword and start thinking of it as an occasion for joyfully solving one of the problems of our age. It must become our Victorian novel.
Something which runs the risk of being deeply boring must become something lighthearted and magical: the thing that clears room in our lives for delight.
PRODUCTIVITY EXPERTS ARE LIKE CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES
“Just make sure you really want all those things you’re working so hard to maintain.”
—TIFFANY HAN
Like a scrumptious cupcake, the productivity promise is nearly irresistible. How sweet would it be to just master some set of tips and—poof!—all your time problems disappear?
The first bite is delicious. You learn something new. Find a hack for your routine. Uncover an erroneous way you’ve been thinking. Awesome.
So, you eat your cupcake, and you are happy. Want a second one? You might. Cupcakes are tasty. Yum. How about a third? A fourth? At what point do you start to feel ill?
If all you’re learning is how to cram more and more things into your life, eventually it’s going to be too much. Any system that doesn’t invite you to take some things out of your life, to make room for the things you want to let in, is not working in your best interest.
THE TOOLS IN YOUR TOOLBOX
“Having a system results in habitual rather sporadic creativity.”
—SRINIVAS RAO
Yes, we need to embrace productivity and time- management techniques. A change of mind-set alone won’t get us there. We need practical tools.
And we have to be realistic about what these tools are meant to do. Some tools help us build and some tools help us prune. Some tools assemble and some cut. We’re going to be adding some things into our lives and taking some other things out, as well as moving stuff around.
Rather than a deluge of sweet promises we’re going to assemble a toolbox full of utensils to choose from. A place where, bearing our priorities in mind, we can reach down and pick up what we need and deploy it to shape our realities to work the way we need them to work.
TIPS, TRICKS, AND LIFE HACKS
LET’S GET DOWN TO BRASS TACKS
“Are you really going to be upset because you’re really busy? Some people are not busy and are praying that they could be as busy as you are.”
—JANELLE MONÁE
Here come the productivity-minded tips and tricks. The brass tacks of time management that can help you reclaim your time. All are interdependent with a change of mind-set.
As you read about these strategies, imagine yourself deploying them. Think about which might fit you and which might not—which might solve your particular problem, and which are just not your cup of tea.
But remember, if you’re tempted to think “that sounds great, but I couldn’t pull it off,” pause and reconsider. Empowering yourself to pull it off might be exactly what you need.
PUT IT ON THE CALENDAR
“Make it a recurring appointment in your calendar and plan on sticking to it.”
—ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Perhaps the number-one thing we can do to make time for a particular activity is to put it on our calendar. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about making time to jog or to draw or to volunteer or to work on a long-term project at our job. Whatever that priority of ours may be that we find ourselves struggling to make time for in our days, this is quite likely the solution.
Look hard at your calendar and figure out the best time to do the thing. Should you focus on that work project for an hour first thing when you start work in the morning a couple of days a week, before you check email? (Much more about email starting on page 85.) Can you make time for exercise before work, or after? Is there a particular evening of the week you could block out for that personal creative project? A recurring weekend slot when you could fit in time for that family activity or social justice cause?
A few tips to really make this work:
Once it’s on your calendar, you have to believe it. The same way you’d believe a calendar appointment that popped up for a dentist appointment or a meeting with your boss. Things on your calendar are real and you’re really going to do them on the day and at the time the calendar says you are.
And, remember, to find these pockets of time you previously didn’t know existed, you’re going to have to use your prioritization skills and make use of some of that good kind of procrastination. What can you move or scrunch or let go of entirely in order to make time for these higher-priority things?
Is that half hour you collapse on the sofa when you get home with your phone and a beer essential self-care time? Or could that time be better used for something else? Only you know the answer to that question, and you only really know it if you’re willing to be brutally honest with yourself.
SYNC UP YOUR TO-DO LIST AND YOUR CALENDAR
“So many people trip in front of them because they’re looking over there or up ahead.”
—KAMALA HARRIS
A to-do list that floats in its own isolated bubble—be that bubble a notebook or an app or something else—just sitting there waiting for you to come and choose a task whenever you have a moment to spare, is not only oppressive (who wants to be followed around by a bubble full of things-you-really-ought-to-be-doing all the time?), it’s also not terribly effective.
After all, much of the time you’ll be called upon to do things other than what’s on the list. This is how you can have something like “make optometrist appointment” or “change 401(k) allocations” sit on your to-do list for literally years. There was always something more important. It was never that thing’s turn.
Plus, every time you do have time to do something from the list, you end up wasting precious time looking up ahead—for example, going over the list and figuring out which of the various things on it you ought to do.
Many of the most productive people avoid this pitfall by hybridizing their to-do list and their calendar.