I use a timer. Even when the thing I have to do is 4 hours in the future. I set 40min, then 30 min, then 20, 15, 10… as it gets closer.
If I don’t, blocks of time will fly by and I will have zero awareness of it. If I’m hyper focused on something, I won’t eat, drink, go to the bathroom, even breathe sometimes.
The timer forces me to wake up for a sec and check in with reality.
And the smaller increments of time as the event gets closer, are so I don’t rebel against it. Like, “I don’t wanna stop what I’m doing yet.” I can have 20 min left but I’ll say, just 10 min before we leave. When that timer goes off, I say, ok 5 more minutes. It’s like giving myself built in snooze time.
I know it’s happening but somehow it kind of works.
I live by my timers and alarms and have learned not to mark a task complete until I have actually done it. Sometimes I’ll mark it complete because I’m on my way to do it and get distracted somewhere between my bedroom and the kitchen or whatever - doesn’t matter how short the distance between point A to point B. Then without that reminder popping up on my phone the next time I pick it up,I completely forget the task. Also, I have this weird aversion to getting ready to go somewhere early. Like, my brain thinks I have to time things perfectly so I’m done getting ready when it’s time to walk out the door and not a minute earlier. So weird.
I've been doing a lot of research for a book I might describe as "anti-time management" (though there's more to it than that, of course). I like making time visual—I use timers every day and am a big fan of tracking things—but I think it's just as important to understand the fundamental problem of trying to control time, which is that *time is limited but desire is limitless*.
In other words, we want to do more than we have time for, and this imbalance creates an inevitable friction. If we try to resolve it with time management hacks, we can get marginal improvements, but we still have the basic problem. (If you can do 10% more of what you want, that's great, but you'll always wish for more time.)
I also think of this in the context of outsourcing and delegation, which is another thing that gets recommended all the time without much thought. You can outsource unwanted tasks and that's great, but the bigger problem is all the things you WANT to do.
Anyway, just a couple of thoughts I had since I'm in the midst of book edits. 🤓 I look forward to more of your posts!
I use a timer. Even when the thing I have to do is 4 hours in the future. I set 40min, then 30 min, then 20, 15, 10… as it gets closer.
If I don’t, blocks of time will fly by and I will have zero awareness of it. If I’m hyper focused on something, I won’t eat, drink, go to the bathroom, even breathe sometimes.
The timer forces me to wake up for a sec and check in with reality.
And the smaller increments of time as the event gets closer, are so I don’t rebel against it. Like, “I don’t wanna stop what I’m doing yet.” I can have 20 min left but I’ll say, just 10 min before we leave. When that timer goes off, I say, ok 5 more minutes. It’s like giving myself built in snooze time.
I know it’s happening but somehow it kind of works.
I live by my timers and alarms and have learned not to mark a task complete until I have actually done it. Sometimes I’ll mark it complete because I’m on my way to do it and get distracted somewhere between my bedroom and the kitchen or whatever - doesn’t matter how short the distance between point A to point B. Then without that reminder popping up on my phone the next time I pick it up,I completely forget the task. Also, I have this weird aversion to getting ready to go somewhere early. Like, my brain thinks I have to time things perfectly so I’m done getting ready when it’s time to walk out the door and not a minute earlier. So weird.
Great to see you writing here again!
I've been doing a lot of research for a book I might describe as "anti-time management" (though there's more to it than that, of course). I like making time visual—I use timers every day and am a big fan of tracking things—but I think it's just as important to understand the fundamental problem of trying to control time, which is that *time is limited but desire is limitless*.
In other words, we want to do more than we have time for, and this imbalance creates an inevitable friction. If we try to resolve it with time management hacks, we can get marginal improvements, but we still have the basic problem. (If you can do 10% more of what you want, that's great, but you'll always wish for more time.)
I also think of this in the context of outsourcing and delegation, which is another thing that gets recommended all the time without much thought. You can outsource unwanted tasks and that's great, but the bigger problem is all the things you WANT to do.
Anyway, just a couple of thoughts I had since I'm in the midst of book edits. 🤓 I look forward to more of your posts!