I cannot tell you how much of a fan I am of Leo Babauta’s blog Zen Habits.  I started following him on twitter and subsequently reading his blog last year during a time of utter chaos. I was looking for a way/methodology/means to de-clutter my apartment which at the time I’d been in all of five months. I also was looking for something that would help me to be more productive as all previous attempts and methods had failed. I found methodology in his and his contributors writing but soon learned that it wasn’t all about the method and the system.  It was really more about the person using the method.  Going futher, I really understood that it was more about how you live and/or how you desire to live than it was about productivity.  That’s when the lessons he was teaching (yes I’d say he is teacher) really began to sink in.

Most recently two posts have really stuck in my mind. The one I’d like to talk here is “How to Live Without the Clock”, which caught my attention because time is something that I constantly struggle with.  My top time trouble spots are:

·         I’m always late (except for work)
·         Underestimating the time it takes to do something or get somewhere
·         Attempting too many tasks within a certain amount of time
·         Wasting time – I’m always doing something but probably not the optimal thing for that time frame and sometimes doing things that are not (in my mind) productive at all.
·         Not having enough time to get it all done.

So I dove into this particular post with zeal. Not to get an absolute solution to my time problem but to get an idea or ideas that would place me on a good path.  Here’s what I learned:

Clearly I have an obsession with a fair amount of anxiety about time.  As I thought about it, having this obsession and anxiety really didn’t make a whole lot of sense because time isn’t something that I can control anyway. Time will keep moving while I’m here and when I’m dead and gone.

Secondly, even with the obsession and the anxiety I’d already begun making amends with time in the form of realizing that I can NOT do everything and I certainly can’t do it all in the space of 90 minutes or less. As such, some meetings/tasks are dropped my schedule and are done so without guilt.

The third thing gleaned from this post is to pay attention, which I have difficulty with but when I do it makes a world of difference. I started paying attention to when I work most effectively and when I peter out.  What work excites me and what bores me to tears. Paying attention to those things is beginning to allow me to better prepare for stuff that I know is coming and stuff that drops into my lap on short notice without going into orbit over “how this is going to mess up my time”. That is a feat in and of itself.

One more thing that I particularly liked about this post deals more with methodology and that is setting a theme for the month as opposed to setting goals for the month.  This has eliminated a lot of pressure and a lot of negative “self-talk” because I’m no longer focused on goals that have not been met and more on the big picture.  For instance my theme for the month of August has been “Reduction” by keeping the theme in mind as opposed to the minutiae of the task list required to meet a goal, I’ve gotten closer than I have ever been to seeing completion.  Completion of what?  That’s in an upcoming post.

If you haven’t checked out Zen Habits before give it a whirl. I don’t know if I will ever achieve full enlightenment but I believe that this is a great tool for enlightening me and maybe you too on ways to improve the way that we work and ultimately the way that we live.