Serious About Time Management
This morning I watched this video on time management. It was striking partly because the speaker was diagnosed with terminal cancer and truly had a very limited schedule. He had a family and while he felt OK for the moment, it was all but decided that his time would be cut short. Most the practical tips on becoming a better steward of time were similar to other methods. Things like making a todo list, avoiding interruptions, keeping responses short and keeping an empty inbox were all methods that I had heard before. The only thing that really differed was that the speaker was a guy who was not only reputable for his time management skills prior to his disease, but excelled at managing the limited resource he had left.
It seems like this details wouldn't have a huge impact, but it provides an excellent context for the topic of time management. Prior to this, time management always focused on getting more done. I think internally this always seemed like a good thing because like anyone else, I've had dreams of being someone that other look up to for the things I've done. The problem is that simply getting more things done doesn't improve your quality of life. What it does offer is an opportunity to get back that extremely scarce resource of time for more worthwhile activities.
What you find worthwhile is something that is up to you. For me, like the speaker, it is spending time with friends and family. Part of that in my case is playing music. As this is where I'm placing my importance, it is easy to push non-important tasks to the background. For example, our upstairs is not the cleanest area of the house. Neither my wife nor I are that excited about cleaning things up. In one sense I could feel bad that I'm not a better house keeper, but today I realized that cleaning up the upstairs doesn't really rank very high on what is important in my life. As silly as it sounds, it was one of the first times I had something specific I intended to work on and decided against it without feeling guilty. I'm not planning on avoiding anything mundane, but it does make it easier to prioritize.
None of this is really new, but for whatever reason, the practical message of the speaker seemed to resonate with me. I think in the past time management always seemed to be a chore, but now I'm seeing how it is a critical part of life. Keeping a todo list used to be a lot of pressure, but the act of keeping one and creating my own system will be helpful, even if it is imperfect. For once, I feel as though seriously managing my time is actually something helpful and practical. I think none of the ideas or perspectives were terribly different, but the context definitely was. Hopefully this time my todo list will stick and I can really get a grasp on what I need to get done. I've tried many times before, but for whatever reason it seems like now I finally get it.
Finally, just to put a bit of a programming spin on things, I'm using Emacs and Org Mode for keeping at todo list. It has a ton of great features and I found a nice cheatsheet to help with the different commands. Wish me luck!
