Aligning time and energy
The seeds of the idea of looking at time started with Charlie Gilkey’s How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Increase Your Productivity. I realized I was scheduling appointments and driving to meetings during my peak creative time on a regular basis. The first change I made was to block out those precious morning hours for my creative work, and do what I could to avoid breaking those hours up in any way.
Knowing what your rhythm is allows you to plan the right tasks for the right times. I think a lot of personal planners miss this and people look at all chunks of time as being equal. All chunks of time are not equal! I can get more done from 0800-1000 on most days than I can from 1600-2000, even though the latter block has twice as much time.
Chris Zydel reminded me about choice in CREATIVITY TIME BANDITS: Making Wise Choices for a Fulfilling Creative Life. She inspired me to start painting intuitively, to start my days with just putting something down on paper. To give myself space to be the artist I know I am. To send the universe a message by starting my day with the creativity that is most important to me.
When you are choosing how to spend your precious life energy, ask yourself the question, ” What really matters to me at the end of the day or at the end of my life? “
What goes into the creative time slices?
Sonia Simone had an insightful post on time this week, How to Get Any Work Done (When Connecting Is Your Job). What really stood out for me in the post was the concept of the Sacred Two:
I’ve made a commitment to carve out two hours a day, five days a week, for my most important work…….There are other commitments I’ve made that are very important to me. Deadlines to hit, projects promised, email to answer. All of that is important. But it’s not sacred. Those two hours spent on my core projects are sacred.
I see I have not been treating the most important things as sacred. I have been treating the biggest fire, usually someone else’s fire, as the most sacred. Then getting frustrated that I am not getting new products and writing done. I decided to dedicate two hours a day to working on the new product system I am developing.
Days one and two, I made great progress. By day three, I had done the parts that were clear. Now I had to wrestle with the I Don’t Know How To Do It Monster. I was face to face with my own feelings of inadequacy. Wrestling with doubt and up against all my own limitations. No wonder I have been spending so much time on email. Usually I know what to do there. Read-> answer. Concrete, achievable.
I have a pattern of bouncing to something else when I hit a roadblock. This isn’t all bad since it keeps me moving forward. But when I am working on a big new project, it can leave hundreds of tasks at the 60 – 80% completion stage. Usually at a stuck place, so not exactly inspiring or attractive. This also fuels my desire to find answers, which sends me off reading blogs and searching the net for relief. I can fool myself into thinking this is productive, but when I see how much of a pattern it is, I have to reconsider that assessment.
Identifying time to get unstuck
I started exploring alternative ways to think about this to-do list of things that feel overwhelming. When I approached an item from the perspective of solving and completing it, it was often too much. But when I scaled it back to finding something that would simply get it unstuck, it suddenly became doable. If I then kept the discipline to just keep unsticking things with micro-movements, the to-do list started to have more items that are ready for the next steps.
Often finding the thing that would start to make room for a shift didn’t take peak creative time, but could be done in the lower energy time slices. I also found there were things that could be efficiently grouped together, like looking information up on the web. By working across task types rather than working until I am stuck, I’m discovering shifts in the quality of how I am spending time. I don’t need to run away into a distracting activity as often.
Progress Report on Time Tracking
I’m still spending over a day on email, and half a day on social media. I’m very surprised to see how many newsletters I am still receiving. I continue to unsubscribe and set up filters. I’m also getting annoyed by the companies who continue to email after I have unsubscribed . I didn’t see much shifting in actual time spent this week, it was more about becoming more mindful about the quality of the time I am spending.
Have any great insights about how long to work on individual tasks? I’m thinking specifically about working on something until it is stuck versus working on something until it has a stopping place where the next step can be bundled with something else. All other input welcome, the comments on the time posts have been very helpful and giving me encouragement and hope.
I’m really appreciating your reflections on time. It continues to be something that I’m kicking around a lot myself. (Or feeling kicked around by, depending on the day.)
And, like you, I realized, after a recent chat with Charlie, that I was scheduling client stuff during prime creative time. That’s something I’m changing pronto.
I think the idea of treating the most important stuff we do as sacred is so important. And, for me, such a hard thing to remember to do. I feel responsible to do this or that before I do the Important Stuff, but I’m realizing that when I do this I’m sacrificing way too much.
Sometimes all of this time stuff feels like a great big mystery to me. So what you’re sharing here is helpful on all kinds of different levels. Thanks!
Christine,
This is all kinds of brilliant, thank you! Like you, I’m also taking a close look at the patterns I have around time.
I love the idea of sacred time. I already know when my peak productive hours are but I don’t always treat them as sacred.
And of course, the time to be creative is a chunk I want to work into my schedule and life as well.
Thank you for this wonderful post!
@Fabeku:
I think it is particularly difficult for creatives to be intentional around time. Some of us have temperamental muses, that get really cranky if we mess with their autonomy!
@Julie Stuart:
I find myself still struggling with considering the creative just for me time as sacred. Its easier when I’m doing creative that is more directly related to ‘work’. Seems particularly hard for us since we use our creative skills in multiple ways.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I especially appreciate your different way of approaching those large, overwhelming to-do list items.
I’ve got quite a few items that fall into that category right now, so I’ll definitely try approaching them from a place of getting them unstuck, rather than finishing them. Feels much lighter and more spacious to think of it that way.
There is so much in here. Very useful. And helps think further about Charlie’s ideas which I already really liked.
Your art is gorgeous, too, by the way.
@Victoria Brouhard:
I was on a call with Jenn Hofmann yesterday and realized not only was I creating todo lists of stuck items, but I was also piling them up on my desk in place of work space. Yuck! Moved them off to another place. Now we’ll just have to see if I can alter the pattern of behavior that created them in the first place.
@JoVE:
This time thing is complex, eh? Thanks for appreciating my artwork.
Beyond considering it sacred, beyond looking at it as a guilty pleasure, I think keeping the time for creativity has to be a priority and a necessity and yes, a habit. Like a muscle, use it often and regularly. That means showing up. Consistently. Once you know when your peak time occurs, then you have a regular appointment with it. And if the muse does show up, and it will, you are ready! If not, at least you are paying attention to it and attuning yourself to it so it can happen. Otherwise, we sidetrack and we defer and we hold back and the muscle deteriorates and eventually we forget what it’s like. And then we are miserable.
I’m glad you’re recognizing some of these patterns and actively working to change them. I’m curious: how’s the process coming along? What continues to be your challenges with it?
I worry about this pattern, really. The key word here is “forward”: sometimes starting something new isn’t actually moving us forward, but instead, it pushes us laterally. Think of the difference between moving vs. moving in the right direction.
It really does depend, though. If you’re able to come back and finish what you started and keep pushing things to done, then it probably is forward progress. However, if you find yourself with too many undone things, it’s probably lateral movement.
When you’re getting to the stuck point, do you try to ask what you need to finish the process before you shift to something else? Looking away by shifting can be incredibly effective if you cue your mind to be working through the original problem.
Keep thinking and working through it, Christine – but be gentle on yourself. Figuring out how to harness your sacred time and keep things moving is challenging, but it changes everything once it clicks!
@charlie
I’m making progress, but it’s taking intense focus. I’ve noticed things that take outward focus like writing blog posts, are not getting done consistently. Giving myself the space to work on shifting entrenched habits is key.
I’m still questioning how the lateral movement affect the overall. I’m working on a large new product system with a ton of different parts. I’m staying within the larger container, not going off and doing things that are unrelated. Still there are multiple paths, releasing small parts in succession or releasing a whole big thing at once. Not sure which is best, but I suspect I am really caught in old business models thinking while seeing glimpses of new ways. The possibilities for creating products has changed dramatically, and the form affects the underlying structures.