I didn’t post last week because I was skiing and that was a reasonable enough excuse to forgive myself from writing anything formal. But I got back home Tuesday and have yet to write anything. I am journaling more, but my formal, cohesive and organized writing still moves at a torturous pace. I could say that its because I don’t have the time, but that is a lie. I am “freelance” which is a fancy way to say sporadically employed. My schedule is completely open and yet I haven’t done anything of substance in the last four days. I’ve barely fed myself the proper amount.
This is a common lament, that people have “wasted” their day, that they’ve “done nothing” and are now behind. I have things that need to be accomplished, they simply aren’t tied to a daily deadline. Whether I do them at 8am or 8pm doesn’t derail my day or my next two-week trajectory. Because of that flexibility in scheduling I procrastinate. I confidently consider myself an expert in procrastination. While I may say that my day needs more “organization”, I have organized my day to accomplish nothing I want to. I’ve gone from Instagram, to Xbox, to Netflix back to Instagram in a well-practiced loop for the past sixteen hours.
Last week was a high-energy week. I was flying from Charleston to Colorado to New York to Colorado and back. I was waking up at dawn everyday and on the slopes skiing by 9 am. My days were full, and with a looming four o’clock deadline for the ski-lifts, I pushed myself to accomplish as much as I could. On days when I was skiing the length of a mountain four times over, the act of making breakfast or bathing seemed benign. The energy expenditure of those actions felt as minor blips to the rest of the day’s action. When I was flying from Queen’s to Denver, the energy expenditure of a subway ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back felt minuscule. Now, back in Charleston, on days when I don’t leave my bed till noon, the act of making breakfast seems Herculean. There are no deadlines, no forced expenditures, every use of energy seems to carry so much more weight with it.
The reason I haven’t changed is the language I used to rationalize and describe it. I shouldn’t address it as “wasting time”, you cannot waste time, it doesn’t just disappear. It is spent on every activity one does. If I am going to change my behavior, I must address the activities I end up accomplishing rather than the ones I intend to accomplish. What do I do? Why do I do them? How can I mitigate that?
It won’t be a matter of me “fitting in” more reading time, but of replacing one activity I already do with reading. I wouldn’t even have to give up the activities, just the time devoted. Rather than four hours a day spent scrolling through memes I could just spend two and devote the other two to freelance job searching.
I encourage you to do the same. Quantify your day, what did you want to accomplish today? What did you accomplish today? What can you change to make what your accomplishments appear more like you intended?
Voce Mea 