What is it time to let go of?
Possibly it’s time for a garage sale of your obligations?
A few months ago, I came across this Fast Company item by Marcia Conner:
In it, Conner talks about her striver’s tendency to take on more, more, more — regardless of consequences. As she puts it, “When starting something new I rarely asked myself, ‘What will I take off of my schedule?’ I’d never aggregated my actions: looking at all I was doing, [or] observing my patterns, let alone considering my bounds.”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds awfully familiar to me. It’s as easy as pie to say “Yes” when someone offers you a plum assignment, or when a friend asks for a help on a tough project. Sometimes it’s the right thing to say “Yes.” But you can also say it so much that you’re stretched too thin, with no time or energy left for your own biggest projects.
Conner’s lodestone for finding a way clear of this problem is a simple set of three questions that she asks herself every day. I’ve been returning to these questions regularly for months now:
What is it time for?
What is it time to let go of?
Is there even more to let go?
It’s that last one that’s the kicker for me. I’m fairly good at getting myself to work on whatever it’s time for, and I can even fool myself into thinking that I’ve let go of my extraneous obligations, simply because I’ve delegated a thing or two, or because I’ve begged off from something. But when I really look, I inevitably find still more cruft lurking in my stack of to-do’s.
Vigilance is the only answer. You have to keep uncovering those hidden obligations, those extraneous commitments, until you’re down to the real nitty-gritty of your work.
What is it time for YOU to let go of?
One very simple place to start, by the way: that stack of magazines you’ve been “meaning to read.”
~
(Picture by colros.)
Category: The working life9 Comments so far
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Noooooo, not the magazines!! :)
It’s okay, Sheila — you’re among friends. Let it all out. ;)
I think the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead/old/rich” thing comes up a lot with driven people, but often the quality of what you’re doing in that state ends up suffering.
You can make a zillion connections and go to a zillion conferences and take on a zillion assignments, but the “you” that you’re contributing ends up fairly watered down.
I think it’s impossible to see it in the moment, too. Which is why so many people implode after big success arcs.
Good thoughts, Meg. More and more I find myself considering the *depth* of what I’m doing instead of the . . . I don’t know what to call it — maybe the “muchness” of my activities?
We can scurry around all we want (”make a zillion connections” etc.), but if we’re not achieving something lasting . . . what good is it?
Thank you for posting this, Tim. For the last few days I’ve neglected to ask myself these questions. Your reminder is perfect. My mantra for the rest of the week: “The cruft must go!”
Thanks for stopping by, Marcia. I can’t tell you how much good these questions have done me in the past few months. Cheers!
Marcia and Tim,
I’m not to the point yet of mastering this art, but I wanted to contribute a thought.
Marcia, you mentioned you don’t know when your outlook changed. For me my journey was started when our first child was born and we were given a little placard containing these words from a poem by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton.
——
The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
——
I’ve come to understand that some things in life become more valuable meerly because of their temporal qualities; the duration is short or the timing is special. A child’s first steps, a shooting star, a first kiss or a last goodbye. If your schedule is too full you’re liable to miss out on some of the unexpected rare or fleeting moments that make life so special.
Thanks for the reminder, too.
Very good comment, Joe — thanks for this contribution.
You’re absolutely right about leaving space in your life so that you can enjoy life’s special moments — whether it means rocking a baby, romancing, closing a business deal, hitting the game-winning shot, or whatever else. But too often we get caught in activities that keep us busy but that don’t actually move us in the direction we want to go.
One of the tests that I SHOULD use all the time but often can’t bring myself to use: Will it seriously make any difference if I skip the action at hand?
You can’t skip rocking the baby or falling in love without it leaving a hole in your life. You can skip reading most magazines, obsessively keeping up with minutiae that doesn’t matter, and so on.
We should choose appropriately.
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