One person’s wasted time is another’s steady progress

I struggle with time. I start each day with a lot of time available and a list of tasks to complete that I feel I should be able to do in that time. And yet I often reach the end of the day with a sense that I have achieved very little.

It would seem that I simply waste time and yet I can’t see where it’s happening while it’s happening. A suggested remedy for this is to write down what you do, when you do it, and for how long. Then look back at a week of activity and immediately see where the holes are or the weaknesses. Or whatever you want to label them.

My problem is that I either forget that I’m meant to be tracking, or I remember too late, or I simply decide I’m too busy to waste time tracking when I’m wasting time doing other things. So improvements in my time management — a horrendous phrase that, like Mahler with brass bands in Ken Russell’s file, gives me the shits — are unlikely.

And yet I can be productive. I am productive. Which points to a problem with self-perception — possibly even with self-esteem — rather than actual time management. I compare what I’m doing with some perfect being who I imagine is doing much more and more effortlessly and with better results.

That’s the real problem with productivity hacks and posts and methods to change your life in lists of seven morning habits or power grains for breakfast or morning pages or brisk walks over hills and down dales. That’s all stuff that, when you do it, may make some difference but when you fail you suddenly feel worse than you did before. And then you try the next regimen to gain super powers and that works for a while.

Everything works for someone. The trick is finding your own thing, your own level, and your own need.

Start with compassion. And compassion starts with refusing to compare.

When I first wanted to write I wanted to write something like James Joyce’s Ulysses. A worthy aim but hardly something I could hit right off — or ever, as it turns out. Everything I wrote I compared to Joyce. To Joyce’s finished work. I never saw the first drafts.

I was comparing first drafts to the polished work of a master. That way madness lies.

Progress, not perfection.