You Don’t Have to Make the Most of Every Part of the Day
Many of us are fascinated by the routine – whether it’s making fun of , well, an ambitious celebrity schedule , or curating ours to maximize time , there’s a whole media subsection dedicated to detailing how “successful” people organize their days (in fact, these procedures were partially inspired by Lifehacker’s Wake Up Week).
These views of others’ lives may shed light, but they are also incomplete. No one, not even Marky Mark , is equally productive every day, and they shouldn’t. Your days change because life is unpredictable. It’s perfectly okay to have (and want) a routine, but trying to frame it based on the recommendations of productivity experts is unlikely to work for most people.
We often scoff at these crazy schedules, but we wouldn’t be talking about them if it wasn’t for the latent suspicion that having a strict schedule is what we must do in order to be successful, to become the people we think are inspiring. A busy day has become a substitute for a fulfilling life.
Asking different questions
But going from one task to another precisely planned task doesn’t necessarily make us who we want to be. Writer Austin Cleon often talks about this :
“How do you want your days to look?” is the question I ask myself whenever I try to decide what to do next. In fact, I believe that most of the questions about what to do with your life can be replaced by this question.
Which career to choose? Should I go back to school? Where do I live? Should I get married? Should I have children? Should I get a dog? Is it worth picking up the piano?
“How do you want your days to look?” makes you imagine, day in, day out, the realities that such choices will present to you.
In this case, Cleon believes that you shouldn’t hack into your routine is bad, and that considering what your ideal day is can help you sort out more important life issues. But it also tells me that there is a better way to live than the one we have been trained to accept.
In another post, Cleon quotes director Paul Thomas Anderson admiring the fact that he can read books in the middle of the day for work :
I still find it difficult to read a book during the day because it is somehow entertaining … You know, well, well, it’s so naughty. I generally read at 10 o’clock in the morning. I think it’s just your upbringing – something like that you have to go to work and you have to – and move on. And yet even – this is how I earn my living. I still feel guilty. 10 hours, I mean – and this – but I immersed myself in the pleasure of it – to think, my God, I have such a life that I can read a book in the middle of the day.
Here Anderson details the inner struggle between what we think we should do and what we choose to do. It is considered wrong to read – to be able to waste time without producing anything – and yet, if many of us were thinking about our ideal day, wouldn’t we be spending it the same way? Why, then, do we think we should only save it for special occasions?
There is, of course, a certain privilege here – many, if not most, of us are not able to spend our days the way we would like. But this is all part of the reason that my recent morning shake-up routine seemed like a bigger change than it might seem at first glance as simply moving the day back one hour. I realized that I really didn’t want (or didn’t need) to waste my life in a rush from one task to the next, not having time to stop and, literally, have a cup of coffee. So I relaxed a little in the morning. You may find that you enjoy waking up early and getting a head start on your tasks and activities throughout the day. And all this is normal.
How to structure your days
What’s wrong is the guilt and shame associated with the inability to make the most of every minute and become the same “successful” person we imitate. Do you really want to spend your days broken down into half-hour segments of ruthless efficiency? Where exactly is this leading you? Or would you rather spend your days differently?
I think it boils down to asking why we do what we do, about being more mindful, well, being mindful. Are you preparing for a half marathon because you really want to run it, or because it symbolizes a kind of square on the checklist that you think you need to cross out? Do you start early and stay after your boss leaves because you really enjoy it, or because you think it will earn you chocolate points? What is the ending of the game here? If you really want more from your days, then hacking your schedule is one way to do it; in other cases, you can skip restoring the cryochamber and read a book instead.