AKICILJ: Time-and-energy management

[serene]

There's so much I want to do.

There's so much other people want me to do.

There's so much I'm already committed to doing.

There's so much I dream of doing.

How do you all resist overscheduling, overcommitting, overdoing, and overextending? I need some help here.

[EDIT: I'm happier doing less, so the goal here is not to figure out how to juggle more stuff; it's to figure out how to say no to stuff that *sounds* good, but won't make me happy in the long run, while not giving up on the things that will increase joy and meaning in my life. Y'know?]

Comments

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

My method won't help you, alas. I'm a hermit with no life.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

That's actually the direction I'm leaning in. I seem to be happier the less I do.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't--but I do schedule my life in such a way that significant downtime (which to me means "time in which absolutely nothing is planned and in which no one wants a piece of me") is part of my crazy-busy schedule.

Admittedly, that isn't working very well right at this very moment. But I know that if I can just get through the next few weeks, a whole bunch of precious, precious free time is in store for me, and that makes it all worth it.

-J

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

It is a constant balancing, within each day, within each week, within each month. It helps me to have my schedule written on a monthly calendar so I can see it all at once, see where the downtime is. Create an activity and rest rhythm, around the things that are at specific times that you don't want to miss. Know your physical and mental limits. Check the full schedule for the month before agreeing to put anything else in it.

Don't be afraid to back out of things that you find take time and energy but don't add to your joy. Don't be afraid to disappoint people by saying no. They get to be disappointed, you get to be sorry you disappointed them. But still say no.

Sometimes there's something I really *wish* I had time and energy for, but I just have to remind myself I don't have to do everything now. It's OK to miss out on cool things sometimes--someone else will enjoy it.

List the things already on your schedule, the things you wish were on your schedule, and the long-term things you want to do. Weed the lists. Prioritize things against each other. *Always* leave some slack in your schedule for downtime.

Embrace the power...

[staircasewriter.livejournal.com]

...of NO.
NOT that I'm great at this myself, but I find the more I do it, the happier it makes me and oddly the more other people respect me. A polite 'thank you but no' works wonders these days. My house is a total mess, but I don't give a damn. Why? Because who the hell cared what Beethoven's house was like or gave a crap about the state of John Lennon's laundry abilities. Some one asks me if I don't care about the state of things, I just smile and say 'no'!
Life is too damn short.
Do the stuff that makes life worth living and politely screw the rest!

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

It is my theory that having huge amounts of $$$ would help a lot with this sort of thing. Failing that, there are definitely never enough hours in a day.

[ailbhe]

Getting ill helped me a lot in this respect.

I also feel much better if I have the time and energy to make the house a nice place in which to live. So making sure I can do that helps a lot too.

[redbird]

Mine is a combination of having ruthlessly pruned my social life, and that the people I still spend significant time with know and agree that I need downtime, and will in fact help me avoid overcommitting, not just supporting me when I say I need a rest day, but sometimes pointing out that I should take one.

I don't like having needed to prune my social life, but I do like the way I've done it: I see some people I am close to on a regular basis; keep up with a bunch of you via the net; and see some other people less often or semi-randomly. The selection criteria for the latter range from who my partners want to hang out with, to who I happen to run into in a bookstore. It's easier (for me) to just hang out with someone for half an hour if that half hour was serendipitous rather than pre-arranged, and such half hours don't involve extra travel or preparation.

[velochicdunord.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

[marea93.livejournal.com]

As someone above said, getting ill helps. Over-committing used to be a huge issue for me but now as soon as I get the least bit overwhelmed my body breaks down. It's not a system I recommend.

I'm not a great fan of Steven Covey personally, but there was a great exercise in 'Seven Habits of Highly Successful People' that I really liked; there were four squares, each for a different level of priority, but I don't remember the rest. Another exercise I liked was pretending you are at your own funeral five years from now and thinking about what you would like to have said about you.

re: AKICILJ: Time-and-energy management

[betonica.livejournal.com]

I chronically over-commit. But I've started with a few things that have helped. One is to limit any new volunteer work to one topic (for me, Fire & Rescue services). So I won't volunteer for the local historical society, I won't serve on the college environmental quality committee, and I won't do work for the local queer community project. Even if I would really like to. But you know? even though the topics are ones I really am interested in, I wouldn't be happy if I added them on top of the too-much-already stuff I have.

Also, I frequently see things I think I'd like to do (go to a concert, take a workshop) that, when I think carefully, I realize I in part think I *ought* to like whatever it is. I ditch those, quickly. Even if I would enjoy them - my life is better if I just take the evening off.

I also periodically go through my list of things I Really Should Have Done Yesterday, and see if there's anything I can ditch without having done/finished it. Will the sun still rise tomorrow? Yes? Good. I like this one. It's very freeing to not be ultra-responsible-I-do-everything-right.

As far as seeing people - they drop by and hang out in my kitchen all the time. The wood stove is a nice time-sinking vortex that draws them in. So I get to see most people I want to (somehow they self-select for coolness), and when I've had enough people-time (or have bills to pay or homework to correct) I wander into a different room for a while. I'm not sure this is really an effective tactic, except in the sense that I see several people at the same time, and they also entertain each other so I get the company without the work (energy) of being a hostess.

Mostly, I'm still working on time and energy management. But limiting the extra stuff I will take on really helped (the "saying no" others have mentioned). It helps me that I've already set a limit, and so have a ready excuse whenever I'm asked for one more thing. And I've discovered that I really, really do need to have this limit. I may not have gotten sick like others have mentioned, but I have started to forget things and let bits fall through the cracks. One more volunteer task and I'd just be doing much worse at everything.

[golden-c-turtle.livejournal.com]

Years ago I adopted life coach Cheryl Richardson's tool of The 5 Absolute Yes's. You decide what 5 things get the priority in your life and always say yes to them, even if it means squeezing other tempting activities out. Clearly, I like hierarchy. Review the list every 6 months or upon significant life changes and then give the priority to those things you have prioritized. I even carry a little card in my wallet with my list, just in case I am caught desperately wanting to volunteer, travel or lay in bed all day and those things are not on my list currently. Since you are the one creating the list, keeping to it most of the time should give you that life of joy because it is a Yes list, not a should list.

[vasilatos]

I've been using TV to slow things down since I got sick, and it's helping big time.

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

Priority Grid

www.community.nsw.gov.au/docswr/_assets/main/documents/good_practice_prioritygrid.doc

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I actually don't know and need to learn this skill too.

[aquenigmatic.livejournal.com]

I do what I have to do first based on my top three goals (and budget 20% more time than I think I'll realistically need to do it, so that when those little things come up I'm not biting off bat heads). Then I rest. And *if* there's any energy left over, my intimates get first dibs on my time and attention and then everybody else in as fair a rotating fashion as is possible. There's not much left over for others usually (or even myself), but those who are still around when things calm down are true gold (as are the intimates who say, "I'm okay--you go see so-and-so if you want to, as I get a lot more of you than they do.")

Anybody who doesn't get it and starts trying to guilt-trip me or make me responsible for soothing their fear of being alone gets quickly moved to my, "Send to the Moon, Do Not Return" list.

[firecat]

I don't have a problem saying no a lot of the time, so I am not sure how to advise you on that. I guess I would suggest that you practice saying no to everything that's optional for some period of time, a week to a month, and see how you feel. Are your regrets from saying no greater than your joy from not being overscheduled?

These days there are a lot more things that my brain and emotions want to do than my body and available time are capable of.

When I am considering doing something, I try to remember how it feels to actually do something like that thing, including all of the extra stuff involved in doing it. For example, if it's an event, I think about the stuff involved in getting ready to go, traveling, and fitting it in around my existing commitments.

Sometimes I can tell that the stress of all the extra stuff would be more than the enjoyment from doing the thing. If so, I say no and I let myself feel sad that I won't be able to do it.

Sometimes I am not sure, and in that case I put it on the calendar. Every day I look at the next five days of the calendar and see how my activities are shaping up. Sometimes I have room for it and sometimes not.

As for longer term projects, I have a feeling of frustration and regret when I can't finish something I decided I wanted to do. The feeling is stronger if I told someone else that I would do that thing, but it's also there when I only decide it on my own.

So when I am tempted to start a project that I know I might not have time and energy for, I try to gauge how it would feel to not be able to finish, and how likely I am to finish, and I ask myself if that feeling would overwhelm my feelings of happiness in working on the project.

Also I ask myself whether this project seems more or less worthwhile than other projects I'm working on. Sometimes I decide this one is more worthwhile but I can't do all of them, so I set aside an old one and start on the new one.

OK, now explain to me why I find it possible to do this with projects and not stuff, and you seem to find it possible to do it with stuff and not projects....

[redbird]

Related to this: if you keep any kind of calendar, electronic or paper, periodically write "rest day" or schedule a block of n hours for "rest" or "time alone at home" (or "long walk by myself" if that's more appealing), so those days will not appear to be available.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

OK, now explain to me why I find it possible to do this with projects and not stuff, and you seem to find it possible to do it with stuff and not projects....

Wish I knew, my friend. Wish I knew. :-)

(As I've been sick/tired/busy, the clutter has piled up, so I'm not sure I'm actually ahead of you on this one at the moment. :-)