Mike Sturm

When it feels like all you have time for is putting out fires, that’s when it’s most important to step back and reflect

image c/o Pixabay

There’s an old Zen parable that highlights the importance of spending your time wisely.

A man goes to a Zen master and says “I need help. I’m stressed, I’m overwhelmed, my mind races all the time, and it all feels like it’s all too much. What can I do?”

The Zen master tells the man “you should meditate for 20 minutes.”

The man, frustrated answers “but I can’t meditate for 20 minutes. There’s too much to do. I just don’t have the time.”

The Zen master nods his head, closes his eyes, and thinks for a few seconds. He opens his eyes and answers “I see. Then you had better meditate for an hour.”

I love this story both because it’s both funny, and it highlights a hard truth that I regularly forget again and again. The more that you think you don’t have enough time to step back, plan, and reflect-the more important it is that you make time to do exactly that.

The act of filling out a card each day is a great reminder that you should take this time. I have found that the less time I take to think about and fill out my items on the card, the worse my score ends up being. Spending time figuring out what should go on my card today and why is always time well spent. And up to a point, the more time you spend on that, the better your day will go.

Because of how valuable time is, you should always look for wise ways of investing it. The reason I continue to fill out a card every day, and keep score, is that I have realized that the time I spend filling out a card is always a wise investment.

All of the things that you have on your plate may make it seem like you should just jump right in and start doing things. But when you do that, you run the risk of focusing only on what David Allen calls the “latest and loudest” things. And those latest and loudest things are rarely the most important things to do; they’re just what jumps out at us upon superficial reflection.

But constantly doing those latest and loudest things first-rather than stepping back to reflect and build a list of important stuff to work on-will just keep you going through the motions, with little to show for it. You may get a lot done, but you’ll make very little progress on the important stuff in your life. Your bigger goals will suffer because you neglect them for smaller, easier, more nagging little tasks.

Whenever you think to yourself I’m too busy to reflect on my goals, plan, and prioritize today’s stuff -remember the lesson of the Zen master. Spend more time planning and prioritizing. By the time today’s craziness gets under way, you’ll be glad you did.

Adapting a simple practice from world-class cyclists can help you achieve more with less effort

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

What can cycling and aerodynamics teach us about building habits and achieving goals more easily?

One word: drag. It’s a well-known term in aerodynamics, but one we also encounter when we try to build habits or overcome procrastination and get things done.

The faster an object tries to move, the more it encounters drag — the resistance of the air around it. If you’re trying to get somewhere quickly while expending the least amount of energy, drag becomes increasingly important to think about. Drag needs to be overcome and minimized.

But overcoming drag is not just a physical undertaking. We encounter other kinds of drag — namely when we try to form new habits or undertake new or difficult tasks we’ve been avoiding. Call it mental drag, if you like. But whatever you call it, it’s real. It’s what keeps us procrastinating and what keeps us from growing in the ways we’d like to.

But there’s good news. There are ways to overcome and minimize physical drag, that allow you to travel fast while expending less energy. And very similar principles can be applied when overcoming mental drag as well. But as with overcoming physical drag, it’s all about learning how to do it correctly.

Drag and Drafting

I remember when a cyclist friend of mine first explained how professional riders go as fast as they do for as long as they do during races. It’s a simple trick called drafting.

He told me that when you see cyclists riding almost wheel to wheel in a straight line like during a race, they’re drafting. They’re using a quirk of physics to their advantage — so they can go as fast as the person in front of them, while using significantly less energy.

Without getting too technical, the reason why drafting works is because the person (or vehicle) in front is piercing through the resistance of the air, and essentially creating a lower pressure wake of air behind them. Because that pocket of air behind the first rider is less dense, it provides less resistance to the rider right behind them.

In fact, the rider right behind the frontrunner in a group of cyclists can cover the same ground while using up to 40% less energy — just by drafting. Even the front runner gets a slight boost as well by having drafters behind. This is due to the lack of turbulent air filling in the void behind them.

If you think about it, this idea can also work in another area where we’re looking to minimize the energy we spend overcoming resistance: personal productivity and growth. Let’s see how the concept of drafting can work with developing new habits and overcoming procrastination.

Habit Drafting

When you’re trying to solidify new habits, the phenomenon of drag is all too real. And it’s not unlike physical drag. In fact, there are those new habits or tasks we’ve been procrastinating on that make us feel like it’s more difficult to physically get started.

Just think about the last time you tried to start a new morning routine. Whether it was stretching, yoga, meditation, journaling — you name it. It probably felt kind of like trying to run at the front of a pack of runners. You’re trying to cut through the air. You’re experiencing the drag.

So, take the model of cycling, and map it onto habits. Take a habit you really want to start, but it’s proving difficult. Link that up (wheel to wheel) with one you’re already reliably doing. Just like putting a weaker cyclist behind a stronger one, you get the benefit of having the front-running habit pull along the new habit. It becomes easier to do the new one, because you’re already doing the existing one with relative ease.

For example, I was recently talking with a friend who’s struggling to start working out, so she can get fit. She’d tried everything she could to get the habit going, but couldn’t. One habit she didn’t have trouble keeping up was picking up a few new novels from the library each week. She’s a voracious reader, and puts books on hold to pick up with excitement.

My suggestion to her was to link up the library habit with the working out habit. The process was: get in gym clothes before going to the library, pick up the book, then do the workout, and read afterward — or even read during the workout, during rest breaks or while on the stationary bike. Sure enough, it was easier for her to get in some workouts.

Task Drafting

Task drafting is essentially the same strategy as habit drafting, but instead of linking up habits, you’re linking up discrete tasks. And in many cases, you’re actually pairing two tasks that you may have been avoiding, but they become appealing when you can get them both done at once.

Years ago, I was teaching college courses as a side-gig — in addition to my full-time job. A few times during the semester, I’d have a pile of papers to grade — which I’d have to find time to do outside of the normal workweek. I had a lot of trouble getting myself to do them in a timely manner and often found myself waiting until the absolute last minute — which was always a nightmare.

Eventually, I got the bright idea to insert that task into other tasks I had to do as well, but during which I could also grade papers. At least one time per semester, I had to get each of our two cars’ oil changed. It often left me with about a half hour of time alone, where I could distract myself with little else. That became an easy pairing. It actually made both tasks easier, because I knew I’d be able to get two things done at once with relative ease.

Another great example is pairing phone calls to friends and family with light housework, or with the driving that takes place during errands that have been on your list for a while. Many times neither task is appealing on its own. But when you find two that you can get done at the same time, they become appealing to do — because you’re doubling your efficiency. Less mental drag, more productivity, more enthusiasm, more momentum for future tasks.

Go Forth and Draft

The more you can use drafting to link new, difficult habits to existing ones, the better your odds of success are. The same is true of linking up tasks you may have been putting off. You get the benefits of riding the momentum of something you were going to do anyway. You also feel the energy of realizing you can now do two things at once that you had been avoiding doing.

Of course, to do this well, you need to do some preparation. You’ll need to have some kind of list of tasks to look at for drafting opportunities. The same goes for your list of goals and habits.

The feeling you get when you do find these opportunities is itself energizing — and encourages you to try it more. As you do that, you find more ways to do more of the things you want using less energy.

This 110 year-old book taught me more in 90 pages than many of the newest big books on the market

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

I love stumbling upon a hidden gem of a book. One that I’ve never heard of, but someone well-respected speaks highly of it.

I was listening to an interview with the great Brian Tracy, when I heard him mention a book in passing as one of his all-time favorites on productivity. It was called How To Live on 24 Hours A Day by Arnold Bennett. I had never heard of it. But if the mind behind Eat That Frog! says a book on productivity is his favorite, you’ve got to check it out!

As a bonus, it was only about 90 pages long. As if that weren’t enough, it’s in the public domain. You can get a copy in various formats courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

It’s a rare thing to find a book that is equal parts deep philosophical examination of life and practical guide to time management. But this book is just that. Some of Bennett’s examples are dated (since the book was written in 1910), but the points he makes, and his observations about what we as working people face, are timeless.

Arnold Bennett c/o Wikimedia Commons

Bennett wasn’t primarily an entrepreneur or a productivity writer, but he was prolific. He wrote 34 novels, 13 plays, wrote and edited hundreds of newspapers and periodicals, as well as writing for the early film industry and briefly running the Ministry of Information in the UK.

And his insights into personal productivity and time management are as actionable as they are elegantly stated. Specifically, there are 4 things from Bennet’s book that are extremely useful to understand for those of us trying to be more productive.

I lay them out here, partly for you readers, but also partly for myself, since it’s advice I still need to follow more in my own daily life.

Don’t Underestimate the Big Effects of Small Things

At the end of his introduction to the book, Bennett essentially introduces the idea of the lifehack, a hundred years before its modern incarnation. You know, those little things you can do to make it easier to do more difficult and valuable things? For him, it was the suggestion of getting an earlier start, in order to get more done.

He anticipates the objections of those who want to have breakfast and caffeine before getting started on work. So he introduces a hack. Prepare a tray that night for the morning:

On that tray two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box of matches and a spirit-lamp; on the lamp, the saucepan; on the saucepan, the lid — but turned the wrong way up; on the reversed lid, the small teapot, containing a minute quantity of tea leaves. You will then have to strike a match — that is all. In three minutes the water boils, and you pour it into the teapot (which is already warm). In three more minutes the tea is infused. You can begin your day while drinking it.

Genius, right? It’s just like putting your coffee and water into the coffee maker the night before — so it’s ready for you in the morning. This was 1910. The man was way ahead of his time!

He also anticipates the critic of the lifehacking mindset, by assuring us that however small we may think these things are, they are anything but. And he pens what’s become my favorite productivity quote of all time:

These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to the thoughtful they will not seem trivial. The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.

And he’s right. The small things — like not having you breakfast and tea (or coffee) ready in the morning — are a big deal. They’re a big deal because they are often the hurdles to us doing the other things — like getting up and working a bit earlier — that could produce huge benefits for us.

He’s also foreseeing the compound effect here, well before it became a staple of personal growth aficionados. Do this small thing tomorrow morning, and it’s small. Do it over and over again, for a year, and you’ve gained a hundred or more hours of productive time.

Wash, rinse, succeed, repeat.

The 7 1/2 Hour Miracle

We all struggle with “finding time” to get things done. Not just to get the “have-to” stuff done, but also to make progress on our big goals. At times, it can seem like there just isn’t enough time in the day for all of it.

Bennett pushes back on that idea. Particularly, he makes two claims about the 168 hours we all have in a week:

1. Even in the busiest of schedules, you can find 7 1/2 hours each week of time that’s just sitting around.
2. If you could fully focus your efforts in just that 7 1/2 hours per week, you could do some pretty amazing things.

Bennett says that if we prioritized using those hours on the important things in our lives, we could do things that from our current viewpoint, may seem like miracles.

But where do these 7 1/2 hours come from? As you can imagine, Bennett has an answer for that:

What I suggest is that at six o’clock [P.M.] you look facts in the face and admit that you are not tired (because you are not, you know), and that you arrange your evening so that it is not cut in the middle by a meal. By so doing you will have a clear expanse of at least three hours. I do not suggest that you should employ three hours every night of your life in using up your mental energy. But I do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions.

That’s it. 1 1/2 hour blocks every other weekday, and one 3-hour session on a weekend day. It’s not asking that much. It’s 4.5% of your week.

Can you afford 4.5% of your week to block off and invest in your growth? It’s kind of a rhetorical question. If you’re serious about growth, the answer is yes.

This isn’t to shame those who haven’t been “finding the time”. It’ actually to do the opposite. It’s to encourage you that the time is there. It’s there for all of us, if we’re willing to do the admittedly hard work of pushing away those things that aren’t helping us achieve our goals.

So in those 7 1/2 hours, what do you do to get the most out of them? Bennett suggests two key activities: honing your ability to concentrate and practicing regular reflection.

Hone Your Most Valuable Skill: Concentration

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the ability to concentrate is a multiplier. As in, if you and another person have 30 minutes in which to work, but you can concentrate better than they can, you can get double the work done.

So setting aside the time blocks is important, but it’s only step 1. You need to be able to concentrate during that time, so you can get as much out of it as possible.

But concentration doesn’t just happen. It’s a skill. And like so many other skills, it needs to be honed. And Bennett has a novel suggestion of how to do that. It’s kind of like meditation, but with a slight twist.

He suggests that you use time you normally spend waiting (like a commute) or doing mindless things (for me, it’s mowing the lawn, vacuuming, or washing dishes). He suggests you pick an idea to think about, and keep your mind focused on it intensely for as long as you can. When your mind wanders, which it will, bring it back to thinking about that idea.

Consider it a kind of mental weightlifting.

And here’s the great thing: This isn’t something new. You’ve done it before — probably many times. Bennett gives a great example most of us can relate to:

Do you not remember that morning when you received a disquieting letter which demanded a very carefully-worded answer? How you kept your mind steadily on the subject of the answer, without a second’s intermission, until you reached your office; whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote the answer? That was a case in which you were roused by circumstances to such a degree of vitality that you were able to dominate your mind like a tyrant. You would have no trifling. You insisted that its work should be done, and its work was done.

If you do put this into practice, two things should happen. First, you’ll get better at staying focused on things. You’ll get better at directing your mind to where you want it to go — rather than the other way around. Secondly, if you pick things to think about that are tough issues, projects, or decisions to make — you’ll get the added benefit of working through those problems, as well. It’s a win-win.

Reflect Regularly

Bennett was a prolific journaler. It’s estimated that at the time of his death, he had amassed more than a million words in his daily journals. And that’s in addition to the many books, articles, and plays he wrote during his lifetime.

He recommends not only journaling, but the practice of reflection that it represents, as necessary for making the most of your time.

…as to what [the most important] course of study should be there cannot be any question; there never has been any question….it is not literature, nor is it any other art, nor is it history, nor is it any science. It is the study of one’s self.

It’s hard to argue with this, and actually not many people do. Instead, they insist that they already know themselves. But if you ever find yourself getting distracted, procrastinating, missing deadlines, falling short of goals, or generally not performing — the first question you should ask is how well do I know myself? Chances are, the answer is not as well as you thought.

This is actually great news. What better subject could there be to have to study intensely than one that’s readily available — YOU! Joking aside, gaining self-knowledge is hard work, but the rewards are immense.

Reflection involves getting honest with yourself on a regular basis. It involves talking to yourself (often in written form) about yourself — and rarely about others. This is an important point. Too much of our reflection on our days revolves around what others have done and how we feel about it. That may be a starting point, but the ending point of reflection has to be you.

The reflection needs to involved getting to tough questions about yourself. Here are just a few: What do you want for yourself? What motivates you? What scares you? What are you proud of about yourself? What are you embarrassed of? What beliefs do you have that might be wrong? Do you love and respect yourself, or are you merely pretending to?

Don’t make the mistake of putting off asking these types of questions of yourself regularly. Your assumption that you have the answers without having done the work of self-reflection will be a consistent obstacle in your life. I know this firsthand. So many of my failed projects could be rooted in my lack of having regularly sat down and done self-reflection. Don’t make that mistake. Start today, and do it regularly.

Summary

It’s hard to believe that a book written before movies, TV, the internet, or mass telephone usage could be so on-the-nose about personal productivity. But How To Live on 24 Hours A Day showed me that we humans have always faced the same types of problems. They’ve simply changed the way they manifest in our daily lives.

Bennett’s treatment of personal productivity goes both deep and broad, but it boils down to 4 major elements. If you can put them to work in your own life — as I’ve been doing since I read the book — there’s not telling what you can do.

• Find the small tweaks in your life that make big things easier
• Set aside 7 1/2 hours each week to work on your most important stuff — and YES, you do have that kind of time
• Learn to strengthen your concentration by exercising it
• Practice regular and honest self-reflection, to get yourself properly motivated

5 Elements to get you feeling like you own the day, rather than the other way around

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

It’s been said that how you start your day sets the tone for how productive it will be. I don’t take that to be an absolute law, but I put a lot of stock in it. I’ve lived enough days in my 37 years to be able to compare days based on how they began. I believe that starting the day right is important.

To that end, I’ve spent a lot of time over the years fiddling with how I start my days. Some morning routines have been very regimented, demanding, and intricate. Others were very loose, or absent. Some were just indulgent. It’s been a winding road.

But when I did have morning routines that worked, they shared a few key elements. That’s what I’m sharing here. I’m hoping that whatever specifics you want to fill in, the overall structure can help you build the kinds of mornings that make your days productive and positive.

Make some time and space

Having both a period of time and a space where you start your morning is important. You don’t need a lot of time; it could be as little as 15 minutes or a half hour. I have 2 kids, and I’m the one in charge of them for the first few hours of the morning. So I prioritize waking up before everyone — at least on the weekdays. I can usually get 60 to 90 quality minutes by myself. It’s glorious.

Space is also an important element. Find a place in your home that will serve as your place to perform your routine. It doesn’t need to be a space you only use for starting the day, but it does need to be a space where when you go there in the morning, you almost automatically get into the morning ritual mode. The point is to make it as easy as possible for your brain to fall into the morning routine your’e establishing. And your space has a big impact on that.

It should be an uncluttered space, if you can find it. The effects of cluttered space on the mood and your ability to think are very real. Make it as easy on yourself as you can to start your morning off right.

Nourish Yourself First

In the world of budgeting, they say you should pay yourself first. When it comes to building a morning routine, nourish yourself first. This doesn’t have to be food — in fact, I don’t eat breakfast at all. But I make myself a damn good pot of coffee. And before I do anything else in the morning, I drink some.

When I drink the first few sips of coffee, I enjoy it. I enjoy the way the mug feels in my hand. I enjoy the heat as it hits my tongue. I enjoy the flavor. It’s a ritual. And it’s nourishing — both physically, and emotionally. However tired I feel, however high the pile of stuff facing me for the rest of the day, I’m nourished and fortified by the coffee.

Whatever your thing is — be it coffee, tea, oatmeal, bacon, yoga, meditation, a shower, prayer — nourish yourself with something that gives you energy and optimism. Make sure it’s something that doesn’t take effort or a lot of time, gives you pleasure, and is guilt-free.

Reflect

I’ve found that the morning state of mind is a unique one. Your brain has been in sleep mode for some time, and is usually producing alpha waves.) for a while as you fully wake up. Alpha waves are important because they can help you more beneficially process information, reduce anxiety, and get creative and reflective. So part of your routine needs to leverage that. Make it a point to reflect.

Reflection is about thinking more deeply than just about what you have to do. You’ll be doing that anyway in a few minutes. But for now, just contemplate your life. Think about your emotions, ambitions, values. Process things from yesterday that you’ve had time to sleep on. Check in with yourself, to see what’s really on your mind, since it’s currently less cluttered than it will be all day.

I highly recommend journaling, but for some, that’s too structured and too demanding for the morning. So don’t force yourself to sit down and write. But do find some level of reflection that you’re not resistant to. Reflect on yesterday. How are you feeling about it? How does that make you feel about today?

For some, this time is for meditation or prayer. For some, it’s about something less structured. But however loose or tight you make it, make sure that you allow time for your mind to operate in a headspace that’s different from the day-to-day hustle and bustle.

Prepare

One of my favorite quotes about preparation comes from Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” And anyone has ever made a plan can probably attest to that. Planning is essential to giving you a positive outlook on the day — or at least making you less likely to feel overwhelmed and stressed.

There will be things about the day that don’t go your way. Count on that; that’s life. But when you’ve planned your day, you can at least prepare yourself for what can (and will) go wrong. The point of planning isn’t to make everything in your day magically happen as you wish.

The point of preparation is to give yourself purpose and the ability to be proactive. The worst days in anyone’s life are the ones where they’re merely reacting to what’s going on around them.

Preparation can take any form you like. I’ve tried so many different productivity and planning systems that I wouldn’t dare say there’s one method to fit everyone. But what I will say is that you need a method that you’re eager to do each day.

Whatever the specifics of your preparation stage, it should involve a few key elements, so that it actually gives you the feeling of being prepared for the day:

• looking at a calendar, or just looking at your time that’s already spoken for — like meetings time sensitive things (like pickups and drop-offs of kids)
• making a list of some key things you want to get done today
• thinking about what might come up today that could throw things out of whack, and how you can deal with it

There are all sorts of sub-steps that you can throw in there — depending on how much you like to plan. But those 3 areas will give you the feeling of being ahead of the day, rather than behind the eight-ball. That feeling alone is worth this entire morning routine.

Move

Studies continue to show that beyond the obvious physical benefits we get from exercise, [it also positively impacts our mental health and cognition](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/#:~:text=Exercise improves mental health by,self-esteem and cognitive function.&text=Exercise has also been found,self-esteem and social withdrawal.). And you don’t have to go to a gym or buy expensive equipment. Simply get your heart rate up, and put a little resistance against your muscles. So a really good morning routine should include some exercise.

“But I don’t have time for exercise,” you might say. All you need is 7 minutes. Seriously. The right series of movements in a single 7-minute circuit each day provides significant benefits. Here’s a great routine, based on significant research. There are also some great apps to get you into the habit. Oddly enough Johnson & Johnson has an app that I’ve found beats all the other ones I’ve tried, and it’s free!

If you already work out in the afternoon or evening, that’s great. But morning movement of some kind (like the simple 7 minute workout) gets you the neurophysiological benefits throughout the day.

I’ve even engaged in an impromptu dance party to various Kids Bop songs — thanks to my early-rising toddlers. It turned out to be great exercise.

“But I just don’t feel like it,” you might say. I hear you. I never feel like it. And that’s the point. Your body is probably used to just sitting still and walking here and there. Your mind is also used to that. But the feeling you get from squeezing in a brief workout when your mind was convinced you couldn’t — that’s a great feeling. And it gives you a boost of confidence to start your day.

It will take time — likely a week or two — to get you into “feeling like” exercising. But in the meantime, commit to at least the 7-minute workout. It’s easy enough that it’s ridiculous to say you can’t do it, but effective enough that it will motivate you to keep it up.

Put It All Together

This template for a morning routine comes from a combination of my own experience over the years, along with the research that I’ve found most compelling.

1. Designate a time period and space in your home for your routine.
2. Do something easy, guilt-free, and nourishing to start it off
3. Reflect
4. Prepare for the day
5. Get Moving for a little bit

Getting as many of these elements into your routine is important. But the specifics that you fill in need to be all yours. After all, this is your routine. It’s about getting you in the best position to take on the day ahead.

Are these 5 elements exhaustive? Of course not. You could do more to set yourself up. But including at least these 5 elements at the start of your day should give you a feeling of confidence and calm about what’s ahead. And that can make all the difference on any given day.

A plan for those spontaneous pockets of time

Photo: ConvertKit/Unsplash

We tend to think about “productive time” in long, uninterrupted stretches, which is why we never seem to have much of it. But the key to good time management isn’t finding more time to work on the things that matter — rather, it’s about effectively using the chunks of time that already exist in your days.

The trick is to make yourself see time differently. For instance, the five minutes it takes to stand in line at the grocery store might not seem like a lot of time to you, so you might as well scroll through social media (or if you’re like me, go down a Wikipedia wormhole). But try this: Set a timer for five minutes and just stare at it, watching the seconds tick away. You’ll quickly see that it’s a substantial amount of time that you can fill with meaningful action.

The important thing is to make a plan for these chunks of time, so whenever you’re presented with them, you can get moving. Here are some great things you can do with two, five, 15, 30, or 60 minutes.

If you have two minutes, you can …

Read/answer/sort non-critical emails

In two minutes, you can sort or reply to a handful of emails or Slack messages that require only a quick response. (Perhaps this is the time to practice emailing like a CEO?)

Record ideas that have popped up throughout the day

For those familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done system, this would be like a mini mind-sweep. Get the stuff that’s been weighing on you out of your head and closer to being handled.

Send a funny or uplifting text

The strongest relationships are often built through tiny, consistent acts. Let a friend, colleague, or family member know you’re thinking about them by sending a hilarious meme or wishing them luck on their job interview.

Reach out to someone in the professional world who you’d like to get to know better

Adding someone on LinkedIn or sending someone a message on Facebook is a great way to start a professional relationship. I’ve seen simple, two-sentence emails evolve into business deals over time.

If you have five minutes, you can …

Reset your nervous system with a simple meditation

You’re probably aware of the benefits of a long meditation session. But it’s also incredibly grounding to just sit or stand where you are, and stop to breathe in a slow, deliberate manner. Doing this resets your nervous system and can help you feel more present. Here are some short breathing exercises to refresh, de-stress, or energize you.

Build momentum on a big project

By simply starting on a project, you create some excitement to keep at it later. Researchers call this the Zeigarnik Effect. When software users see a message like “You profile is 64% complete,” they are more likely to spend a few minutes on providing all missing details. Take five minutes to move your project past 0%.

Write a brief journal entry

Journaling has enormous benefits, but carving out time to do it — especially if it’s not already a habit — can be difficult. Luckily, just spending minutes recording what happened today, how you felt about it, and what you can do better tomorrow can go a long way.

Read an article that you “saved for later”

Why not chip at that backlog of stories on Medium, Pocket, or Facebook that you’re waiting to read when you have time?

If you have 15 minutes, you can …

Do an intense workout and shower

You don’t need equipment or special shoes. Simply do some exercises like push-ups, squats, jumping jacks, and planks. The Johnson & Johnson 7-minute workout app has some workouts that are really invigorating.

Do a “shitty first draft”

If you’ve been dying to write something — a short story, novel, article, or heartfelt note to a loved one — the trick is to just start. Do a shitty first draft, as Anne Lamott would call it. No overthinking, no deleting. Leave all the editing for later. The momentum you’ll get from 15 minutes of writing will be invigorating.

Call a loved one

We tend to forget the power of simply keeping up with people in our lives — be it colleagues, personal friends in our networks, or family members.

If you have 30 minutes …

Host a brainstorming session

Thirty minutes may just be the perfect brainstorming time block. It’s enough to create a train of thought sufficient for generating ideas, but not so long as to be daunting. Just don’t go in expecting good ideas right off the bat. In fact, give yourself a goal of coming up with five to 10 bad ideas before you even expect to think of some good ones. Record all the ideas as they come, good or bad, without judging their merit. At the end of the session, evaluate the ideas by giving them an A, B, C, or D grade based on how promising they look.

Make a plan for the following week

I’m a big believer in the practice of the weekly review. In 30 minutes, you can look back at your meetings and calls from the past week to capture any open loops and set goals for the following week. You can also review your big projects: What still needs to be done? Does anything need to be put on hold?

If you have an hour, you can …

Do an “errands batch”

Most errands and personal admin tasks can be batched together and knocked out within a 60-minute window, if you stay focused. Set a timer to do your expense report, go through your mail, pay your bills, make a dentist appointment, pull together your library books to return, and create an Instacart order.

Do some deep work

To really focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task, you’ll need an hour. Spend the first 20 minutes or so repeating the fairly shallow thinking you’ve already done about the topic. Then use that momentum to push your thinking to a deeper level. It’s glorious to experience a “flow state,” but it takes time to get there.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting you use every single minute of your day to get things done. But if you re-examine those stray minutes and use them to take care of what needs taking care of, you’ll have more time left to relax, while not having to think about a thing.

Being more productive, relaxed, and physically healthy can be as easy as playing the numbers game — using 3 numbers as your guide.

Photo by Miftah Rafli Hidayat

How many times have you tried to change your habits, only to fall right back into the old ones?

You try new workouts, new apps, new routines. You read a self-help book, try to log and measure your results. You journal for 20 minutes, meditate for 30, spend time preparing healthy meals in order to lose weight. You absorb yourself in the minutiae of self-improvement. And in the end, the new routines don’t stick, and the improvements you made fade away.

For those of us looking for a simpler, more common-sense approach to living more productively and with much less stress— here’s a fairly simple solution. It’s three numbers — three percentages, to be exact: 80%, 40%, 10%.

The 80% number is for your diet. It will help you build a healthier relationship with food and with your body — and thus feeling better.

The 40% number is a reframe to help you push past roadblocks, plateaus, and self-doubt.

The 10% number kills two birds with one stone. It gets you managing your time more effectively, and as a result, helps relieve a lot of stress and anxiety.

80%: A Healthier Relationship With Food

Our relationship with food is broken.

We all need to eat, but dieting and food have become problematic — especially for those of us looking to improve our health. Dieting can be a veritable minefield of frustration and bad habits. Many of us eat too much, eat the wrong things, eat at the wrong times, or a combination of all three of those things.

Many of us have researched various diets or nutritional hacks in order to lose weight, avoid gaining weight, or simultaneously lose fat and gain lean muscle. Still, our relationship with eating tends to fill us with a sense of uneasiness.

Enter the Japanese philosophy of hara hachi bun me.

The idea is simple. You don’t count calories or eat only certain foods, but rather, you follow one simple rule: eat until you are about 80% full. That’s it.

Eating until you’re 80% full may seem a little difficult at first — especially if you’re used to cleaning your plate every time you eat. But if you dedicate yourself to it, you’ll find that two you end up paying more attention to how your stomach feels. You become more in tune with when you’re actually hungry, as opposed to when you’re bored, or looking for the comfort of food.

If you really pay attention to how you feel when you only eat to 80% capacity, you’ll notice that post-meal lethargy will mostly go away. Much of that fatigue after a work lunch, or dinner out comes from being overfull, and our bodies needing to shift into digesting mode.

For those looking to lose weight, the 80% rule can help you lose weight pretty simply. As you grow accustomed to eating to 80% fullness, that 80% slowly becomes your new “full”. So eating to 80% of your new full feeling can segue into eating less and less, until you’re only giving your body what it needs.

40%: Getting More Out of Yourself in Work and Life

Growth requires consistently pushing yourself. But in most circumstances, we can forget just how much we can push ourselves. As a result, we tend to miss opportunities for exceptional growth. Instead, we plateau or stagnate in our journey toward growth.

We’re told all the time to “break out of our comfort zone” in order to grow, but that alone is not very helpful advice. Luckily, ex-Navy SEAL, elite athlete, and author David Goggins has introduced us to the 40% rule — relayed here by Chris Myers:

The 40% rule is simple: When your mind is telling you that you’re done, that you’re exhausted, that you cannot possibly go any further, you’re only actually 40% done.

I don’t perceive this to be an exact science, but the idea is that we tend to vastly underestimate what we’re capable of. This is true physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Physically, we can usually endure much more than we tend to think we can. As long as you’re not in the kind of pain that is indicative of an injury, you can usually push past the discomfort or feeling that you want to quit — and into the realm of making your body (and mind) grow.

Mentally and emotionally, we often underestimate how strong and resilient we are. We tend to throw in the towel at the first sign of difficulties in thinking through a problem, or discomfort with our feelings. We shy away from hard conversations, or don’t dive into feelings that we don’t like. But if we remember the 40% rule, we can push ourselves to sit with that discomfort, and remember that we are strong enough to deal with it, and move past it.

You can test this as you try to work on difficult projects, as well. Set up a block of time, be it 30, 60, or even 90 minutes. Challenge yourself to work for the entire time. Note the points where you feel like giving up or allowing yourself to be distracted. When that happens, remind yourself that you’re only 40% spent; you have more gas the cognitive tank. Then keep working.

When you’re done with the time block, you’ll feel really good about yourself, and really energized. And even though you may have expended more effort than you normally would, you’ll actually feel energized to take on more. Funny how that works, right?

10%: Better Use of Your Time

They say time is money — and that we ought to be conscientious about how we spend both. That’s why it’s important to build in margins for both your time and your money — meaning you put some aside for what might come up later.

Most budgeting experts recommend you save 10% of your income each year as the foundation of your retirement. If you do that from a reasonably young age, and make even conservative investments, it should be enough to provide for a comfortable retirement. Ideally, you should prioritize saving that 10% first, and then budget whatever other spending around that 10%.

This same budgeting strategy works for time as well. If you schedule 10% of your time as “savings”, you build some buffer in your days and weeks — which will almost always come in handy. Thing always come up, and you’ll always find a place for that time to go.

Here’s how 10% of your time breaks down:

• each week has 168 hours, so 10% of that is 16.8 hours.
• If you only want to count waking hours per week: 168-(8x7)= 112. Assuming you get a luxurious 8 hours of sleep every day, that’s 112 waking hours remaining.
• 10% of your waking hours is 11.2 hours.

So if you want to be conservative, allow 11.2 hours of time as buffer time. Let’s round it down to 11.

The result of building this margin is — like with money — you have extra time that can help you deal with the inevitable things that “come up”. You won’t get stressed, time-crunched, or feel like you can’t get the urgent things done.

To be clear, that 11 hours needs to be unassigned time. You can’t fail to set aside time for things you know you’ll need to do during the week, and then take time from that 11 hours. That’s not truly buffer time.

This means that you have do a little prep work. You have to think of all the stuff you expect you’ll have to tackle this week, fit that in somewhere, push the rest out — and leave 11 hours open.

It might feel odd to have this much unspoken for time in your schedule, but don’t worry. Not only will it get filled up with stuff, but the stuff that ends up filling it might be the kind of spontaneous and cool stuff that turns into something great. Consider it life’s gift to you, for making time for magic — so to speak.

This will take upfront work, and the building of a habit of scheduling your weeks, but it is well worth it for the stress you save. But not as much time as you think. You can get away with spending 20 minutes just doing some rough estimations of what you’ll need to spend time on each week, and you’ll capture most of what needs to be captured.

And with 11 hours of buffer built into your week, you should feel poised to take on the unplanned or unexpected. And it will feel great.

Implementing 80/40/10 in Daily Life

Making this method work in daily life is as easy as remembering the numbers, and using them. No matter what productivity system, morning ritual, or daily practices you have, you can integrate these three simple practices into them.

• You’ve got 3 meals (give or take), so sit down to each one prepared to stop when you think you’re 80% full.
• Pick something you’re working on, or your workout that day, and remind yourself when you think you’re done, you’re only at 40% done.
• Set aside 10% your time as a buffer: It’s 11 hours per week, or 1.5 hours per day. Leave that time unassigned, to allow you the opportunity to take on anything.

I recommend checking in with yourself on these regularly. If you journal, reflect on how well you’ve adhered to this. Put the three numbers on a sticky note on your bathroom mirror — to see it every morning. However you do it, keep the numbers visible, and hold yourself accountable for sticking to them. They just might be the game-changers you’ve been looking for.

If you found this helpful, subscribe to Woolgathering, my newsletter of useful and interesting ideas — published weekly.

Photo by Quincy Alivio on Unsplash

Whether you meditate, exercise, journal, or sleep in — the most effective morning routines boil down to one essential component.

Morning routines have been a big deal for a few years now. People from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe seem to have something to say about the best morning routine to make your day as successful as it can be. Some are simple and easy, others are complex and brutally difficult. Many are somewhere in between. But is there anything simple and fundamental that we can distill from them — something to use to make a no-frills effective morning ritual?

I think there is, and it comes down to a simple word: re-dedication. The most effective morning routine is one that involves you rededicating yourself to your mission — whatever that may be. And if you don’t have a mission, your best mornings will involve you rededicating yourself to figuring out your what your mission is, and then dedicating yourself to it.

This morning re-dedication is unique and intimate — meaning that it only works if it builds on your particular quirks — your unique points of view, strengths, and shortcomings. If it doesn’t, the likelihood of it being both effective and consistent tend to drop significantly.

Make the Morning Uniquely Yours

First and foremost, the best morning routine is the one that works best for you — meaning that it gets you excited and invigorated, and creates energy, rather than saps it. And as good as Elon or Ellen’s morning routines are, don’t overlook the fact that they are them and you are you — and that’s not a bad thing. So just as you are different than either the monarch of moonshots or the titan of talk television, so should your morning routine be different.

It helps to keep in mind Ockham’s Razor as it relates to productivity: don’t spend more time or energy on tools, habits, and hacks than you would actually doing the stuff that needs to get done.

This also applies more specifically to morning routines — meaning that you shouldn’t adopt a morning routine that takes a bunch of time and energy to set up and keep doing. Yes, you need to push yourself to do something different and uncomfortable — that’s how growth works. But the more different and uncomfortable your new morning routine is right off the bat, the less likely you are to stick to it early on, and thus the less effective it will be.

The best approach to building a morning routine is to make a few changes at a time — unless those changes are ones that your over-tired, sluggish, hungry, thirsty, and lazy morning self will be excited about. But here’s the real trick: the details of the morning routine are less important than you think.

The Magic Component: Re-dedication

Whatever the details of your morning routine, the one thing it should always include is an element of re-dedication. If you’re already interested in adopting a new morning routine, you’ve probably already got goals, objectives, a mission, or some kind of aspiration that you’re working toward.

The heart of a great morning routine is your act of rededicating yourself to whatever valuable thing you’re working toward. The reason for this is simple: we are almost never more energized and focused than when we have a heightened awareness of our purpose or mission. An act of re-dedication to that purpose is a great way to cultivate that heightened awareness — which cultivates increased energy and focus.

For me, the re-dedication ritual is intertwined with various things I do each morning. I have my trusty list of objectives, projects, and tasks — where it’s easy to look at the mission and re-dedicate myself to it. But I also re-dedicate myself while I’m exercising, or while I’m engaged in my morning spiritual practice (which for me is a combination of chanting and meditation). Even in the shower — if I’m really on my morning routine game — I will re-dedicate myself to the important goals in my life.

It’s really very simple. When I don’t do that — when I don’t spend time rededicating myself to the important missions of my life, I am simply not as likely to be effective. So whatever I did in the morning — no matter how great it sounds on paper — if it didn’t include acts of conscious re-dedication, it probably hasn’t done much for me.

Great Mornings Expand Beyond the AM

Some of the best morning routines don’t even begin in the morning; they begin the night before. They begin with preparing yourself for re-dedication in the morning — making that easier to do. They begin with making a list of things that are nagging at you, and committing to doing something about at least one of them tomorrow.

Great morning routines are really just expressions of a great approach to the day. This is not to say that you can’t have really productive morning activities without sitting down the night before to plan. But when you spend at least a few minutes the night before doing some planning or setting intentions for the next morning, you place a heavy burden on the very groggy and usually less energetic version of yourself.

The last relevant point I’ll make here is this: don’t place too much of a burden on yourself with the morning routine business. Just because you read an article about meditating and journaling that got you really psyched about morning routines — that doesn’t mean that you have to stick to those practices for any period of time.

Journaling, list-making, and other morning routines are not valuable in and of themselves; they bring value through structuring your awareness around certain things. It’s re-dedication, just in different forms. You can just as easily rededicate yourself to your mission while you quickly pack your bag and hurry off to the airport.

An effective morning routine not about the specific physical actions you take; it’s about what your mind is doing as you start your day. It’s about whether or not you sincerely rededicate yourself to what you’re trying to accomplish.

You will never be more productive than you are with a clear mission that is front of mind. The morning routine that pushes you to clearly understand and dedicate yourself to that mission is the best morning routine for you.

photo credit: Alejandro Alvarez on Unsplash

On the project of “personal growth” — what are we trying grow, how do we measure, and what do we do?

I once worked with a guy who was in charge of a large amount of people in my organization. I pitched a project to him that had a lot of moving parts, and a heck of a lot of uncertainty. His first question was “what do you measure to know how much progress you’re making?”.

At the time, I didn’t have a ready answer. I think I came up with one eventually (or the project died; I can’t remember which). But that conversation left a mark on me. When you are going to devote time and energy (and probably money) to some undertaking, you should have an idea of how to measure progress.

So for those of us who have undertaken the lifelong project of “personal growth”: what is it that we’re trying to grow?

Don’t laugh, the answer will not come as easily as you think. And any answer you come up with quickly will yield at least two more questions.

What Are We Measuring?

As best as I can tell, there are a few candidates that most of us have in mind when we talk about “personal growth”. These include, but aren’t limited to:

• The Goodness of our Life (however broad that may be)
• Happiness (but not pleasure?)
• Emotional Strength (as in how much we can endure?)
• Productivity (simply as output?)
• Relationships (quality, not quantity?)

Until I started seriously thinking about this question — what we’re measuring — I fell into the same trap as so many others. I assumed I knew what it is I was looking to “grow”. But now that I am thinking about it, it isn’t quite clear.

Why Is This A Problem?

There may be a few of you reading this who don’t understand what the problem is. After all, if you’re meditating, working out, gaining muscle, losing fat, getting promotions, traveling, and having children (or whatever) — what’s the problem?

Well the problem is this: we humans tend to find ourselves quite often chasing the wrong things — both in the short and long term. We are really good at misidentifying what we think will make our life a good one. I have heard enough stories about very accomplished people feeling empty, insecure, and regretful to know that we are often mistaken about what we ought to be growing in our lives — even if we passionately pursued something for years.

Suffice it to say: there are many types of growth you can achieve. But unless you’re growing the right things, and you know how to measure changes in those things, you’re just groping faithfully in the dark until (perhaps) you find something that feels good.

The Cost of Growth is Growth

I’ve been alive for just over 35 years, and one thing that has become abundantly clear to me is this: the cost of growth is growth. Which is to say, the cost of growth in one area is growth in some other area. This is nothing new, really. It’s simply opportunity cost; a basic principle of business, but applied to your personal life.

So the trick to personal growth is to choose the right thing to grow — because the cost of that growth is giving up growth in some other area. And if you choose wisely, you will have given up the opportunity to grow one thing that doesn’t matter to you, and thus pursued growth in something that does.

The basic activity of life is trade-offs. You are continuously trading one thing for another. Every one “yes” is a “no” to infinitely many other possible opportunities. We often act like that’s not true, and it might be the source of a lot of our anxiety and frustration. But our refusal to act in accordance with reality does not change it.

Every “yes” is a million “no”s. We are destroying more opportunities than we ever create. But we must make peace with that fact. When you can know that life is a series of trade-offs, and arm yourself with a way to happily make those trade-offs, that’s a huge step toward a good life.

You’re the Measurer and the Measured

The unique thing about personal growth is that you are both the person measuring and the thing being measured. That makes assessing growth particularly challenging. But it also means that you’re in the unique position to be an expert on how you’re doing.

But just because you have the opportunity to be the expert on your own life doesn’t mean you actually fill that role. To truly assess your own growth requires the ability to step back from yourself — from the activity of your mind, and your ego — and honestly look at how you’re doing. It should be no surprise then that mindfulness may just be the most useful tool for personal growth.

Mindfulness is simply the ability to view your own mind objectively. It’s the ability to step back and see what is going on in your mind and in your life — without immediate judgment and emotion. It’s a dispassionate examination of your emotions, desires, and thoughts. If ever there was a better way to hold a ruler up to one’s life, I have yet to find it.

No matter what it is you’re measuring in your life — whether you’re looking to eliminate or enrich something in it — you need to be able to measure how you’re doing. You simply cannot do that reliably without mindfulness.

As my old colleague said so long ago: we have to know what we’re measuring and what measurements are important, before we can grow in any meaningful way. When it comes to personal growth, those measurements need not be quantifiable (i.e., numbers); rather, they can be qualifiable (i.e. “I feel less anxious than yesterday”). The only requirement is that measurement be mindful, and that we treat ourselves with respect as we measure how we’re doing.

Credit: Ashim D’Silva

A deceptively simple, game-changing practice that I discovered in a most unlikely place.

There is no shortage (especially here on Medium) of writing about daily habits, routines, and practices that promise to change your life. Journaling, meditation, exercise, doodling, and so on. So far be it from me to add more to the already towering stack of things that everyone should supposedly be doing in order to live their best lives.

But I can’t help but share this simple daily practice that I recently stumbled upon. It’s simple but dense with meaningful stuff. It is easy enough to start doing today — even if you’re driving to work, on a plane, or lying in bed. And if my first day doing it is any indication of how effective it is, I would call it a game-changing habit. So here goes.

I recently found myself on the website of the Center for Non-violent Communication. There is treasure-trove of helpful stuff on there — feelings inventory, and a list of needs, to aid in more effectively understanding and communicating your emotions. Of particular interest to me was a page called 10 Steps to Peace. The page lists 10 principles to serve as the foundation for better communication and cooperation between people. The very first one is this:

Spend some time each day quietly reflecting on how we would like to relate to ourselves and others.

That’s it. It’s that simple. I should spend some time — each day — quietly reflecting on how I would like to relate to both myself and to others.

Why It Works

For every one of us — except for hermits, infants, or the deceased — relating to others is a necessary part of life. And we continue to hear more and more about how integral relationships are in a good life and professional success.

Think of it: families, friends, community members, professional teams, clients, or suppliers (which is to say — all of us who are not ) — a lot of the important things in your day revolve around how you interact with others. So wouldn’t it be wildly beneficial for you to interact with them in such a way that you built and sustained better relationships with them?

Even if you don’t think you really interact in meaningful ways with others (which you are probably in denial about), you definitely interact with yourself. In fact, at the root of a great deal of our problems is our relationship with ourselves. We lie to ourselves, we break commitments to ourselves, we’re unreasonably hard on ourselves (over 70% of our self-talk is negative).

To top it all off, we actually don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. We may weave grand narratives about our intentions, our emotions, our needs, and our knowledge — but when push comes to shove, we often end up being surprised by what is actually going on in our minds. Just ask anyone who has meditated for any significant length of time.

In fact, part of what makes meditation and mindfulness so beneficial is that if you do them right, you begin to relate to yourself differently. You stop identifying with your momentary thoughts and feelings. You come to accept certain felt needs and emotions. You put space in between stimulus and response. That’s exactly what this practice is: a practice of becoming intentional about how you relate to yourself — and to others.

How to Do it

The great thing about this practice is that it is format and tool agnostic — meaning you can just think about it, or you can write, or talk to yourself. Do whatever works, as long as it actually works. And by “works” I mean “achieves the goal of forming an intention of how you would like to relate to yourself and others today.

I’ll just relate how I like to do it. It’s not glamorous, and it would not be a great article for some online business magazine about morning routines — but it seems to have done the trick.

The week I first chose to do this, I had (perhaps unwisely) chosen to buy whole-bean coffee. That mean that when I woke up at 5am — groggy from a short night of sleep and having to do a bunch of stuff before 8 am — I would have to use my hand-grinder to make coffee grounds for my auto-drip machine to work. Normally, I would zone out while measuring out the beans and turning the crank for 5 minutes or so. But the day after reading about this new habit, I remembered to given it a try.

Here’s the simple bullet-point rundown of how I implemented the practice my first day:

• I took a series of 3 deep breaths, with my eyes closed, and tried to just clear my head for a bit.
• I pictured myself as a powerful CEO, in an intimidating-looking office, and also pictured myself as the newest entry-level employee in that same office — facing the powerful CEO.
• I asked the entry-level employee version of myself: how would you like the CEO to treat you today?
• I turned to the CEO and said: if you treat this employee the way he wants to be treated, you’ll get way more out of him, and he’ll work his ass off for you.
• I pictured a few of the people in my life I interact with regularly, and imagined myself as the CEO again, and them as the new, scared employees. I ran the same scenario as above.
• At the end of it, I came up with this:
  I will give myself and everyone else the benefit of the doubt. I will relate to them (and me) in a way that seeks to understand and validate their feelings, their needs, and their felt purposes first without judgment. Then, if I desire something from them, I should make the request in the most respectful way possible.

I wrote down my intention the first day, but that’s not necessary. You don’t even have to do the visualization exercise that I did (I tend to go crazy at first with new habits). The purpose of this habit is to be intentional about how you interact with both yourself and others. Rather than simply react — as most of us do to ourselves and others — this habit helps you to act with a purpose.

The Results

This practice won’t be magically transformative on the first day. It wasn’t for me. In fact, I still had many reactive and thoughtless reactions — especially to myself (which is how it goes for most people). But I was more aware of when that was happening, because I had firmly set an intention to focus more on how I was relating to others, and awareness is the first step of change.

I’ve been doing this for a week now, and I am finding myself with a little more space between stimulus and response. I’m finding myself approaching interactions with people differently. I am doing more observation of my feelings and thoughts, and here’s the strangest (or coolest) thing. Instead of the largely judgmental and negative self-talk that hurl at myself during the day, I’ve become more of a benevolent observer of my mind.

I still have negative emotions, but I don’t let those turn into full-on moods. I am able to observe “I’m feeling anxiety” and rather than beating myself up for it, and trying to brute-force happiness, I acknowledge it, label it, and tell myself it’s okay that I’m feeling that way. Does it magically cure me? No — not even close. But it does dull the always-sharp edges of negative emotions. These days, I feel what I feel, I do what I can to find out why I might feel that way, and allow it to pass — while I focus on treating myself with compassion.

Unlike meditation, this practice doesn’t require a lot of time, a certain physical position, or tools. You can do this while you make your coffee in the morning, brush your teeth, while in the shower, and so on. And though it might feel weird at first, it is the most natural thing in the world to think about. You relate to yourself and others every day. This practice just helps you become more intentional about how you do it.

Photo by Eddie Garcia on Unsplash

An Essay on the Ever-Shrinking Appreciation of Spare Time, and How to Budget it Back into Your Life

“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

At my day job, there is an environment that I’m sure is quite familiar to most working people — whether they work in a Silicon Valley startup, a small unglamorous business, or a large conglomerate. It’s the environment of scarcity. But it’s not scarcity of money (though that is a reality for some), but rather, a scarcity of time and energy. We have a lot we’re trying to do, and even more that we want to do, but aren’t doing yet — but we don’t have enough time or energy available.

This is not exclusively a problem at work; it’s a problem in our personal lives as well. There are dishes to do, soccer practices to drive to, friends to visit, grocery lists to make — and so on. There are more things we both need and want to do than time and energy available. It creates a great deal of stress — which saps our energy even more.

This has made me think a lot lately about the concept of margin — that space between what we have and what we need. We hear about it in business, as the measurement of profit — and to that end, we value margin. However, when it comes to something even more valuable than money — namely our time and energy — we don’t tend to value margin at all. I’m not quite sure why that is.

What is a Margin, Anyway?

Craig Mod, in a wonderful essay about books and craftsmanship writes:

Text printed on the best paper with no margins or unbalanced margins is vile. Or, if we’re being empathetic, sad. (For no book begins life aspiring to bad margins.) I know that sounds harsh. But a book with poorly set margins is as useful as a hammer with a one inch handle. Sure, you can pound nails, but it ain’t fun. A book with crass margins will never make a reader comfortable. Such a book feels cramped, claustrophobic. It doesn’t draw you in, certainly doesn’t make you want to spend time with the text.

Here, Mod is using the typesetting definition of the word margin, but his conclusion can be carried over to any other similar use of the term. For instance, in project management, a margin of time is called a buffer — an amount of time over and above the estimated time that task or project should take. That buffer or margin of time is left open because in projects — as in life — things tend to just come up, and those things require your time. Because of that, you leave yourself a margin — spare time.

In finance, a margin refers to the difference between the cost of something and what its sell price is. It’s the difference between revenue and expenses. In short, it’s the money that you have which doesn’t already have somewhere it needs to be spent. Though it differs slightly, the concept is similar enough to a buffer in time management. So I will use them synonymously.

Margins have always been desirable in finance because having more money than you currently know what to do with is basically the definition of wealth. People who are rich have more money than things that need to be done with it. To carry the analogy over to time: people who are not time-crunched have more time than they have activities that need to take up that time. In either situation — all other things being equal — having that margin (of time or money) is the foundation of feeling secure and at peace.

Why We Need — But Don’t Allow Ourselves — Margins

If you don’t have a margin of time or money, you get stressed. You’re anxious about how you’re going to close that gap between what you have and what you need. If you’re lucky, you might match them up — you “make ends meet. But in most cases, the thought of having more than you need — especially when it comes to time — is a feeling more and more unfamiliar and unimaginable to people. This is a big problem.

What compounds the problem is that so often when we find ourselves with a bit of a margin, we tend to get rid of it rather quickly. We get anxious, feel weird, and we find something to do with it, so we don’t have to worry anymore.

To put it another way, we are increasingly re-investing the margins of our lives, rather than keeping them. Spare time and energy is spent on side-hustles, collecting experiences, and other things to keep us busy. But this re-investment leaves us little with which to handle the wonderful spontaneity of life — the stuff that just comes up, and makes life so very worth living.

That’s the key: we need to get comfortable having some time and energy to spare. Having that margin allows you to remain calm, present, and open to new things that you weren’t planning for. In my experience, those things can bring so much value — and yet, if we don’t allow ourselves a margin, we can’t enjoy them; we squander the opportunities to find something truly wonderful.

How Do We Reclaim the Margin?

One of the books that radically changed the way I approached working and life is Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slowness. He has this wonderful analysis of our current time-constrained, fatigued situation:

Like a bee in a flower bed, the human brain naturally flits from one thought to the next. In the high-speed workplace, where data and headlines come thick and fast, we are all under pressure to think quickly. Reaction, rather than reflection, is the order of the day. To make the most of our time, and to avoid boredom, we fill up every spare moment with mental stimulation…Keeping the mind active makes poor use of our most precious resource. True, the brain can work wonders in high gear. But it will do so much more if given the chance to slow down from time to time. Shifting the mind into lower gear can bring better health, inner calm, enhanced concentration and the ability to think more creatively.

I think that is the key. When we allow ourselves more time and energy to appreciate the spontaneous and seemingly mundane things of our days, life gets demonstrably better.

So how do we do that? How do we reclaim the margins we gave away —the spare time and energy that can be so beneficial and enriching?

One way is to slow down. Just like Honoré says, shifting the mind into a lower gear can help immensely. But we resist this, because we mistakenly think that if we move quickly, we’ll squeeze more out of the day. My experience is that such a thing rarely happens — we rarely do squeeze more out of the day by moving quickly and making ourselves time-crunched. What does tend to work is specific, intentional, targeted action — and that is rarely quick. In fact, that kind of deliberate and thoughtful action is slow, almost by definition — slow, but effective.

Slowing down your mind can be as simple as adopting a meditation habit. I know — you’ve read about this before, right (in numerous articles)? But there’s a reason for that. My experience is that the mind is naturally calm, but it loses that calm due to the pressure of the many inputs in our world that demand so much of it.

Think of the mind as a calm, glassy pond. When you continue to throw rocks into it, and run your speedboat around it, the water becomes choppy, unclear, and full of movement. But when left alone, it settles back into its natural state. I have found that this can be done with the mind. But it takes effort — time and effort. However, once you can calm the mind, it’s easier to start valuing the margin — the spare time, because you come to appreciate time when your mind is not occupied — when you are calm and centered.

Another way to create margin — and perhaps the most important thing to sustain it — is to do the same thing you do when you need to create margin with your money: budget it. Time and money are a lot alike — except time is even more scarce than money. You could theoretically get more money in a given month, but you cannot get more time. You’ve got 168 hours each week, and there’s no changing that. So to create that margin, you’ll probably need to budget for it.

Budgeting Time for Margin: the 10/10/80 Rule

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a piece of budgeting advice that is attributed to billionaire John D. Rockefeller. It’s called the 10/10/80 rule, and it’s quite simple:

• give 10% of your income to charity
• save 10% of your income for the future
• allocate the remaining 80% of your income for expenses

Millions (maybe billions) of people swear by this advice. And if it works for budgeting money, why not use it for something both valuable and fixed — like time?

Here’s my proposal: create margin in your time by budgeting your weekly hours using the 10/10/80 rule. It’s simple: just make a few tweaks to the rule as it applies to money, and voila — you have some breathing room!

• use 10% of your weekly hours doing stuff for others
• save 10% of your weekly hours as a time margin (buffer)
• allocate the remaining 80% to getting all of your projects and tasks done

A word of advice. I choose to subtract sleep time first before budgeting. That is the most sunken of sunk costs, and it makes sense to not include those (but you can, if you like). Let’s assume you get 7 hours of sleep per night (or at least aim for that).

168 hours in a week - (7 days of 7 hours of sleep) = 119 hours

If you allocate the remaining 119 hours of non-sleep time each week according to the 10/10/80 rule, you end up with:

• 12 hours serving others
• 12 hours of margin time
• 95 hours for everything else

When you look at it that way, it seems very doable. You have 95 hours to work, do a side-hustle, exercise, watch movies, etc. This is your “spending money” of hours, to use as you wish.

The 12 hours of serving others is actually a kind of trick because it can actually serve you as well. Use it to call friends you haven’t spoken with in a while. Walk around the office and catch up with people. Actually volunteer in your community. If you have a spouse and children, spend some of that time doing nice things for them, as well. The key is that having that time available allows you to feel okay about doing things for others, because you have the time.

The 12 hours of margin left over are also a kind of trick because there are all sorts of places it can go — and in all sorts of increments. If it’s a crazy week at work, you can allocate some of it to unforeseen work. You can use it do unexpected repairs on things, or do creative work that you wouldn’t otherwise do. You can journal, meditate, or do any other things you haven’t done because “there’s no time”. The list goes on and on. The key is the feeling — the feeling associated with having budgeted your hours and having that 12 hours of time that hasn’t been spoken for already. It frees your mind to stop worrying about time — much like a budget (when followed) can free your mind to stop worrying about money as much.

In Conclusion

Just like having cash left over is a best practice of managing money, so is having time left over a best practice of managing your time. And as with money, investing that saved time in the right things can yield huge dividends for you. But you’ll never realize them if you don’t budget for the margin.

Follow the 10/10/80 rule, modified for time management, and you’ll have that spare time to set aside for the kind of stuff that just comes up, but can be so worthwhile.