It’s easy for us to overlook our relationship to time. Its a fairly simple thing for us to overlook because its something that no one really comes outright and teaches us about. Fostering a relationship with time is more than just a cookie cutter time based schedule that we hash out. It is one of those things in life that is more easily understood experientially. These relationships vary from person to person as we all reside within it to the tune of our different schedules be it the things we choose to do on our own accord or the things we must do based on what is demanded of us by life.
When I first came upon the idea of time blocking I was left in a state of what might be described as confusion. While the idea of the matter at hand was quite simple and seemingly fairly easy to implement, there was something missing in my life that created a disconnect. I now realize looking back on such an experience that this disconnect was simply due to having a poor relationship with time. At that point in my life I was learning quite a bit of everything in an attempt to become more familiar with the basics of personal development. I knew what I wanted to do but I didn’t quite have a grasp on my direction just yet and my days were spent doing the things that I knew were remotely important for me to move toward my goals but something was off.
There was certainly progress being made but my days were a bit off kilter, they had no solid tempo or routine nature to them. I was doing what I felt was important but nothing was certain in terms of buckling in and getting it done in a way which felt naturally rhythmic. Quite a lot of resistance was simmering under the surface when I thought about putting in work at this stage. While time blocking is certainly possible without a daily rhythm I found that having one, as I do now, makes it especially easy to adapt such a time management tool. I’ve yet to do so myself but the idea that once felt so foreign and forced has come to a point by which it seems quite natural now and I look forward to putting the pieces together to adopt such a method of self management.
If you know where you want to go and you’ve not been able to really hammer out your schedule by use of the tools put forth by others give this a try. Focus more on building a natural tempo throughout your week in which you complete routine daily tasks focused on achieving your goals. Once you’ve developed such an inclination to automatically take care of these things, which you may even find yourself looking forward to, you might try plopping things to be done into such a time management system. Instead of immediately nailing yourself to a board and saying that you must get such and such done by a certain time, foster such a will within yourself to be doing these things every day anyway in such a way to be considered already routine.
It’s important that we are kind to ourselves. A majority of things in life go much smoother if we take the time to tame the elephant as the rider before we attempt to force it into one specific direction. By working with the tasks we’d like to eventually assign to time slots we are building that relationship with the time we exist in that will allow us to easily plop our will into such a system. It is rather easy for us to know where we’d like to go and we can simply robotically assign such new and important tasks to time slots but in doing so I can assure you that your elephant is going to show you who’s boss. Work with your elephant if at all possible my friends.
I wish for you success, growth, and good fortune!
Jordan Hutchison 