Two Things About Time

I've finally admitted that most of my non-kid-related posts to this blog are about my struggle to use my time wisely, so I created a "time" category. However, I'm not going to move all my old "time" blog posts into it. I just don't have the time.

However, this post is a pleasant change from my usual moaning about not having enough time. I have actually learned two things about time.

Slack

A few years ago I read a review of Tom DeMarco's Slack. I'm not sure what the book is actually about (and I don't want to look it up right now lest I lose track of my thought) but what I took away from the review is that piling your employees with the absolute maximum amount of work they can handle is not effective. People and systems need enough available slack to deal with crises as they arise. (Also people, especially people doing creative work, do some of their best work when they have a chance to be idle, to chat with coworkers, to just think. I'm pretty sure that I learned that since, though.)

At the time I thought the slack theory sounded very credible, mostly because it validated my own work-related misery and exhaustion at the time. (In retrospect that's laughable; I hadn't had kids yet and had no idea what being too busy meant; I was miserable and exhausted at work for other reasons.) But it wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that it occurred to me that the principal of incorporating slack applies to individuals as much as it does to companies. When your everyday life is crammed to the brim, you have no recourse when a family member gets sick, a neighbour adopts a baby or a friend loses a parent; you have to either abandon something important or let someone down.

At the moment my schedule is crammed full; between household maintenance and childcare and child management and choir and school choir and friends and working out and, of course, work, I have no slack. And there's nothing I want to give up.

However, I'm trying to let things fall away and not replace them. I have stuck to my resolution to not take up the eco-committee chair position at school; I have stubbornly refused to take on any other major school volunteer jobs; I have even declined to arrange social events.

My plan, and I think it's rather clever, is to fill my slack time with a space-holder hobby: something worth doing but which I don't mind setting aside if I'm needed for something more important. I have a needlework project which my father started as he was beginning to sink into dementia; he abandoned it when he was moved into the nursing home, and I brought it home with this summer. I want to finish it but I don't mind how long it takes. That will be my time-space-holder. Just as soon as I find some time to hold.

Time Panic

In the October 5 issue of New Scientist Debora MacKenzie reviews three books about pursuing happiness. Part of her review is about how scarcity inspires obsession:

...the brain focuses ferociously on what it feels is lacking. This reflex evolved to help us find what we need. The team's real insight is that it applies to all scarcities, not just of money, but of time and even social contact. We "tunnel" in on the scarcity and ignore anything outside.

All that scarcity messes with how we manage the resource in question.

The future looks less menacing than the scarcity we face now. So we borrow money, then borrow more, disregarding future costs as interest mounts, until we are deeply in debt.

This is exactly what I do when I feel overwhelmed with things to do. Instead of taking the time to figure out how to best spend my time, I panic and either avoid everything or just do the first thing I put my hands on, which is sometimes helpful, and often not. At the end of the day I'm exhausted, anxious, and no further ahead.

Uuh, I'm not sure what the takeaway is from this particular clue, apart from that I need to notice when I'm flailing and take a deep breath. It might seem like I don't have time to take a deep breath, but really I don't have time not to.