I fell back into an old habit on Monday. Forgetting everything that I’ve learned over the previous year, I started to break my day into hours. I thought it would work. I don’t know how many times I have to try this ‘strategy’ before I realize that I don’t operate well with this sort of strictness.

I wrote on a blank piece of paper:

From this time to this time I’ll work on this, and then this time I’ll allot for travel and eating, and then from this time to this time I’ll work on this.

I figured out my day hour by hour. The next day I slept longer than I intended, and everything immediately got thrown off balance (on further reflection, this always seems to happen when I break the next day apart like this).

I couldn’t slow my mind down. I started on task B before I had finished task A. A million windows were open on my computer. I started to panic. My productivity got worse and worse as the day progressed. I was getting more and more frustrated. Nothing was getting crossed off because I wasn’t giving myself a chance to finish anything before moving onto the next thing.

Eventually I closed my computer and walked home feeling annoyed. “I should have woken up earlier,” I thought. But that wasn’t the problem.

When you plan your day with that sort of strictness, the joy of living get’s squeezed out of life. What’s the point? You already know what your day is going to look like. Life becomes monotonous and boring. It becomes unbearably predictable.

In different words, I said this to my friend Jax. I didn’t realize that this was the problem, until I said it. Of course. How can you live with spontaneity and joy when you squeeze every opportunity for living out of your day?

You can’t!

I think planning your day hour by hour also removes the possibility of growth. When I separate my day into chunks, the only thing that is on my mind is crossing things off. I’m not thinking about progress. I’m not thinking about learning. I’m thinking about speed.

A Different Way of Living

Tuesday, after yoga, I sat down in the corner, closed my eyes, and breathed. My mind felt like a windup toy, clicking away. I told myself, I would sit in meditation until the windup toy that was my mind started to lose momentum. I was not allowed to get up until I had the visceral feeling of my mind slowing down. It took around 25 minutes, but eventually it did. The rest of my day was wildly productive.

‘Time’-management is not the most effective life-management strategy for me.

I’ve found that I’m most productive and happy (that’s key!) when I let go of this concept of ‘time.’ I’m far more productive in the present. One task at a time. That’s it. It’s so simple, and yet I find it so challenging to embrace.

By letting go of my expectations of how much time something should take, I’m able to get a lot more done with more quality, less to almost no procrastination, and an addictive focus. I start to get a high off my work.

It’s the best of both worlds. Things get crossed off at a rapid pace, and I actually enjoy my work. Now that, in my opinion, is a WAY better way of living.

I’ve also decided to continue with that style of meditation every morning. I used to meditate so that I could mentally check it off as ‘done.’ That doesn’t really work. What works is meditating with a conscious decision to reap the benefits. Meditating for a purpose. Meditating to slow down.

Everything feels so much better when I slow down and breathe. Things get done a lot faster too. How about that for a paradox?

What are your life-management strategies?

*Not, this blog post took me 23 minutes to write, and 10 minutes to edit and format.