Commitments and Time

Another part of simplifying life is to look at how we spend our time.  I learned about time studies when I was managing a department full of people with different levels of skills.  I asked them (and myself) to track what we were doing every hour.  This is not as hard as it sounds, by the way.  It just requires stopping for a minute every hour (set an alarm) and writing down what you did during that hour.  After a week of doing this, I was always amazed at what I learned.  At work a lot more of my time was spent checking email than I would ever have imagined.  Email is actually not a priority most of the time.  So I just checked it about three times a day - when I came to work, at noon and at mid-afternoon. 

There were a lot of other time wasters too - answering the phone every time it rang was another one.  So I began to just block out periods of time during the day when I did not answer the phone.  Now in order not to make people angry who were trying to reach me and who thought what they wanted was urgent, I was dedicated to returning phone calls immediately after I finished with a phone-free period of time.  If I didn't reach the person, I left a message as to when I could be reached that day, and I answered the phone during that time period.   I also answered email as I checked it during email checking times.

I also had the bad habit of saying "yes" to everything I was invited to do.  In the process of checking how I spent my time, I looked at my commitments.  Like a lot of people, I think, I was in the habit of thinking I could do everything.  The trouble is, like everyone else, I only have 24 hours a day, and every commitment I keep is one that keeps me from doing something else.  What I decided to do instead was make a list of everything I was doing, thought I should do, and that I wanted to do, and looked at how that fit in 24 hours a day.  To my astonishment, the time needed for all of it would have taken about 72 hours a day.  No wonder I felt unsettled with my life!  So I worked on prioritizing which was a painful experience since it meant I had to cross things I actually wanted to do off my list.  But 24 hours a day, is still just 24 hours a day.

For a time I tried to make 24 hours go further by sleeping less and being productive every second of every day.  Some people can do that.  It turns out I'm not one of them.  I need about ten hours of sleep out of 24 and I also need some do-nothing time as well.  So it turns out I don't actually have 24 hours a day - it's actually more like 10.  When time is that scarce, it really motivates me to give deep, prayerful thought to prioritizing.  This is my life after all.  How am I going to see this day at the end of my life?