Time Allotments

   The early mornings are my "allotted" time periods, so said without malice for it is a time when my wife still sleeps and I can browse the computer or write or read or pay bills.  And yet even with that piece of time, there seems to be a piling up of stuff, a revealing quip coming from my friend who --after many years-- peeked into my office area, saw the mess, and said "nothing's changed there."  Was that a good thing or a bad thing?  (likely the latter)  But we all have those periods of time that we set aside each day.  Perhaps it is a period at night when we put aside those last 20 or 30 minutes for a bit of reading; or a piece of time to plop down on the couch after a day of work and dinner to catch a bit of the tellie; or ideally a chunk of time we set aside for just talking and being with the wife and family (and animals).  Whatever and whenever it is we usually have a period sectioned out, a routine.  For some of us this is a period to look forward to while for others it might be something of an obligation, a tightly scheduled and perhaps inflexible period of time.  Must get those 10,000 steps in on our Fitbit, or maybe that quick visit to see a friend has now passed the allotted hour mark and thus the next item on the schedule is going to be late. 

   All of that isn't a bad thing or a good thing, it just is.  After all we are all different and however we schedule our allotted time is likely just an indicator of who we are.  What some might view as rigid and anal-retentive might be exactly how someone else is viewing us.  But as management consultant Laura Vanderkam said in her Ted Talk, all of these time allotments are just indicators of how we prioritize.  Can't make that friend's dinner?  Likely not a priority.  No time to exercise?  Likely not a priority.  Said Vanderkam: To get at this, I like to use language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed.  By busy, I mean she was running a small business with 12 people on the payroll, she had six children in her spare time.  I was getting in touch with her to set up an interview on how she "had it all" -- that phrase.  I remember it was a Thursday morning, and she was not available to speak with me.  Of course, right?  But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me is that she was out for a hike, because it was a beautiful spring morning, and she wanted to go for a hike.  So of course this makes me even more intrigued, and when I finally do catch up with her, she explains it like this.  She says, "Listen Laura, everything I do, every minute I spend, is my choice."  And rather than say, "I don't have time to do x, y or z," she'd say, "I don't do x, y or z because it's not a priority."  "I don't have time," often means "It's not a priority."  If you think about it, that's really more accurate language.  I could tell you I don't have time to dust my blinds, but that's not true.  If you offered to pay me $100,000 to dust my blinds, I would get to it pretty quickly.

   There are many things that can influence those decisions of course, from bad weather (I can testify to this when an unexpected icy sleet storm caught everyone off guard and I felt lucky to just make it home as the streets all became a slippery with slushy ice) to having other and perhaps unexpected commitments (having to stay late at work or coming down with an illness).  "Time is highly elastic," says Vanderkam.  "We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we need or want to put into it."  In her latest book, I Know How She Does It, she discovered that a majority of people who claimed to work 75 hours each week tended to overestimate that time by about 25 hours.  So is it that we don't --or feel we don't-- have enough time or is it that we are simply not "making" enough time?

   Such allotted time for me is primarily time for reading.  I enjoy reading (non-fiction) of all sorts, from science journals to those of home building and crafts, and from men's journals to ladies fashion magazines, not to mention the news and political weeklies.  And toss in that pile of books while you're at it.  All told I think that I might tend to read a bit more than most and yet know that I read quite a bit less than others, such as the reviewers of The New York Review of Books.  Their extensive reviews (sometimes of 3 books on the same subject) require not only a lot a reading in a hurry, but detailed research (some of the reviewers are professors in that respective field).  And one must also realize that of the many books that they review, that number accounts for less than 1% of the books received to be reviewed. Said Pamela Paul, editor and one of the reviewers: One year, when I didn’t have a job and I didn’t have a partner and I didn’t have kids and before the Internet, I read 76 books for fun, including “Moby-Dick.”  That hasn’t happened since.  I try to read a book a week, but big books sure do slow you down.  As does life.  The big sacrifice is TV; I never get to watch TV.  And then there's the mail that comes in: We have our mail opened several times a day.  On most days, we have three large carts piled high with boxes and envelopes, plus 10-20 Postal Boxes filled to the top.  So picture that!  All of those comments come from a site called Literary Hub, which describes itself as: ...an organizing principle in the service of literary culture, a single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of contemporary literary life.  There is more great literary content online than ever before, but it is scattered, easily lost—with the help of its editorial partners, Lit Hub is a site readers can rely on for smart, engaged, entertaining writing about all things books.  Each day—alongside original content and exclusive excerpts—Literary Hub is proud to showcase an editorial feature from one of its many partners from across the literary spectrum: publishers big and small, journals, bookstores, and non-profits.  It's participating members' list is rather intimidating...and for the reviewers and editors of the site, that means more reading.  Where's the time?  Did I mention that the daily site is free? (their choice of material spans the spectrum, even jumping into the almost-truthful world of personal ads with a humorous slant)

   There are many such free sites, ready to faithfully plop into your inbox each day, each of which having much to offer; from news and political sites to informative lecture series such as those of TED,  receiving and reading them becomes just a matter of making time.  This time of holidays can make it seem as if we simply don't have enough time for such matters, as friends and family arrive or want to catch up on a long-delayed visit.  Then there might be the cooking or the shopping or the working or the chatting...same as it ever was only seemingly compressed.  But as Laura Vanderkam concludes: ...small moments can have great power. You can use your bits of time for bits of joy.  Maybe it's choosing to read something wonderful on the bus on the way to work...If family dinner is out because of your crazy work schedule, maybe family breakfast could be a good substitute...It's about looking at the whole of one's time and seeing where the good stuff can go.  I truly believe this.  There is time.  Even if we are busy, we have time for what matters.  And when we focus on what matters, we can build the lives we want in the time we've got.

   Don't let the holidays compress you.  Look the other way.  Open up.  Make time.  There is much out there, and much in there.  Go seek it...