So here’s where things started to shift for me. When I looked at how I spent my day, I wasn’t exactly shocked. I did manage to check a ton of things off of a to-do list that was too-long for any hope of sanity. I half-way completed about a billion different things, I started organizing the bathroom, cleaned out the car (but Jud woke up before I could finish and vacuum), worked on a project I had volunteered for (while stopping to check my emails, yet never respond to a single email) throughout the process. I don’t think I gave my focus to one single task throughout the course of the entire day.
When I first started the time management exercise, I thought I would just revamp my schedule and that would be the quick fix for getting it together. That just wasn’t the case, before I could even look at a new schedule, I had to make some huge changes and really contemplate my priorities and set those straight.
I kept going back to one of my favorite quotes:
“I don’t think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, the scripts we know offer a brand of security, of predictability, of safety for us. But the problem is, they only take us where we’ve already been. They loop us back to places where everyone can easily go, not necessarily where we were made to go. Living a different kind of life takes some guts and grit and a new way of seeing things.”
? Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
For me, typical was the constant circular motion of our days. I knew that if I kept track of my days in 15 minute increments for an entire year, I would continue to spin in the same circles. I could plan differently, of course, but planning is a small piece of the puzzle. A middle piece that has trouble fitting by itself. There needs to be structure and order for planning to work in our lives.
I did a ton of contemplating the next logical steps, how would I get from chaos to order? And how could I get there as quickly as possible? Could it actually be done during this season of our life? Spoiler alert, I believe it can. Not without hard word and a little sacrifice, but with planning and execution, I’m starting to see glimpses of carefree evenings and empty laundry baskets. It feels just as good as I thought it would.
If this series were a book, these would be the four chapters, the logical sequence we’ll follow throughout the remaining 31 days.
prioritize
refine
assess
schedule and maintain
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