As I’ve said
before, planning my day is a two-part process.
(See Harnessing
Time with a Little Help from My Friend.)
Once I’ve come up with my plan, I call my friend – my regular time
partner – and tell her what my plan is.
I tell her how my day went yesterday too – what I did and didn’t do,
what successes I had and problems I ran into as I carried out yesterday’s plan. Then she tells me the same about her day
yesterday and her plan for today.
I absolutely love
doing this. It helps me feel good about
myself because it forces me to pay attention to all the stuff I’m getting done
(instead of just ignoring that while I focus on what I didn’t get done), and it
helps me let go of what I didn’t get done.
My favorite part of the whole thing is saying what was on my list that I
didn’t do yesterday (I did not do yoga, I
did not pay the water bill, etc.). Somehow
saying those things out loud, like someone listing sins in a confessional, and
then being absolved of them by my friend, and then hearing what my friend
didn’t do that was on her list, makes me see how insignificant my not-doing on
any given day really is. It also gives
me a realistic sense of how much I can reasonably expect to do on any given day,
and it brings certain facts to my attention that I might otherwise miss (such
as the fact that I’m not exercising many days in a row and I need to find some
better way to fit exercise in). The
whole check-in process also makes me more mindful while I’m doing whatever I’m
doing (because I know I’m going to be telling someone else about it so I’m more
likely to pay attention myself), and adds an element of companionability to all
my days, so I never have to feel alone with whatever happens, no matter how hard
or strange, frustrating or funny it is. Plus, checking in with my friend is fun.
This check-in process
grew out of another time-harnessing exercise one of my friends came up with on
a Sunday afternoon about four years ago.
She suggested during a phone call that we tell each other what we’d like
to do during the next two hours. Then,
she said, maybe we could call each other back after the two hours were over and
report to each other what we’d actually done.
We
both had stuff to do around the house, the kind of stuff that feels great when
you get it done but that you find yourself putting off for weeks or months or
even years – cleaning out closets, weeding through drawers and taking what you
don’t wear any more to Goodwill, catching up on filing. So we told each other our goals for the next
two hours and decided who was going to call whom when the appointed time
came. When the time did come one of us
called the other and we made our reports and then we praised each other for
what we’d done and waved away each other’s guilt at what we hadn’t gotten done.
The whole exercise
worked great. It broke the day down into
manageable chunks and helped my friend and me get a lot more done than we
probably would have without it. It gave
us the impetus to tackle chores we wouldn’t have otherwise and made doing those
things feel fun instead of tedious and endless.
Not that filing and cleaning out closets were any more enjoyable than
they usually are, but somehow knowing you were going to tell somebody exactly
what you did made it fun. And it was
enjoyable precisely because it wasn’t endless; it was knowing you were only
going to be doing those things for a brief, limited time -- putting boundaries
around the time you’d be spending on them – that made it pleasurable, or at
least easier and a lot more tolerable. (I
remember saying to someone once years ago, when I was applying for entry-level
jobs I didn’t particularly want, I can do anything for four hours a day.) The Sunday check-in process also made my
friend and me feel like we weren’t alone even though we were in our separate
houses. Afterwards, my day felt well spent.
I’d accomplished a lot and even socialized in the process.
My friend and I
still do the Sunday check-in thing every chance we get, and, like I said, those
check-ins also led to a somewhat different, daily check-in routine for me. I strongly encourage anyone who feels
chronically rushed, out of control of time, or bad about what she gets done on
any given day to try either or both of these check-in processes. They only take a few minutes and will
increase your productivity, improve your ability to manage time, and contribute
immeasurably to the quality of your daily life – I know they have mine. They’re also a fun easy way to socialize, to
reach out and connect intimately, regularly, with another human being, without
even leaving your house. And they draw
on two great resources we all have available, for free, but often don’t take
advantage of: time and each other.
--
Mary Allen
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