something I forgot to tell you

I messed up.

I may have misled you when I shared about my experiment with time journaling.

I wrote that I now structure my days differently - which is largely true!

And I gave you examples of time blocking — dividing the week into various forms of productivity, leisure, exercise, quiet time and meditation. It may have sounded like this new relationship with time was just a matter of reconfiguring my days into a rigid, highly-efficient matrix. That is not the case. Read on.

I’ve heard the same complaint from a few people: “I tried tracking my time and it was too hard to keep up!” and “I found it really stressful to have to account for every minute — I hated this exercise.”

To that I say “hell yes!”

When I offered a time journal and shared how tracking my time changed the way I use my time, I failed to mention the anxiety I experienced when first trying it. That I experienced a discomfort that can only be described as not-enoughness. An internal voice would say: “Clearly you’re not packing enough meaning, learning, growing, working, memory-making, one-precious-life-ing into every 15 minute increment. TRY HARDER!” And that’s what many of you experienced as well. And I failed to prepare you for that part. I jumped right to how you can change your relationship to time and skipped the question of why. Why does shifting my relationship with time matter?

So I’m here to say - no, I don’t want you to pack more into your days. I want you to start doing less.

Less of the stupid shit. (For me this was social media and indulging complainy people)

Less of the things others can do better than you (I, for one, can stand to delegate more)

Less of the things that leave you feeling depleted, insecure or wasteful.

What are you willing to stop doing in order to do the things that matter most to you? Tracking your time for a few weeks may be uncomfortable, but if you think of it as simply gathering data, patterns will emerge. What matters will rise to the top and the rest will sink lower toward the bottom.

I offer myself as guide for you. Please get in touch if you’d like to schedule an hour for exploration and, ideally, acceptance of what matters today.