Gaining Back Time

It is an annual ritual to look back over time’s shoulder as the year comes to a close, while simultaneously squinting your eyes into the year ahead. This is an important ritual for me because when I pause to really think, patterns inevitably emerge that weren’t obvious in the present moment-by-moment experiences from the past year. It’s become trendy to choose a focus word or concept for the new year – a practice I’ve followed off and on for the past few decades. As I spent time walking, reflecting, and journaling, it didn’t take long for a 2022 theme to bubble to the surface – a focus that seems almost urgent to attend to and universally applies to every area of my life and work: Simplify.

The tumultuousness of the past two years has brought so many rapid changes and shifts in how we live. The disorientation we feel shouldn’t be a surprise. Just when I think I’ve got a system in place for remote work, we shift to hybrid work. When virtual meeting protocols seem to be working, we’re thrown into in-person settings that feel awkward. We are like the rats in the landmark study showing that chronic unpredictable stress leads to an anxiety/depressive-like response that looks and feels an awful lot like hopelessness. In this environment, I found myself playing the victim role in my relationship with Microsoft Outlook. Each day, I opened my calendar to see what was in store for me, which was inevitably a solid block of meetings from 8-5, and often longer – every single day. In this new reality of the last year, I found myself making sheepish comments so that I could quickly and discreetly sneak away  to the bathroom, or shove a handful of almonds in my mouth, because there was literally not one minute in my day to step away from my laptop camera. Even more tragic and detrimental to what I believe I am called to do, is the complete loss of thinking time in this type of environment – no time for deep and meaningful work.

In his book, A More Beautiful Question, author Warren Berger shares that, “Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my brain come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.” It dawned on me that this kind of original thinking is actually one of the most important things I do, and I have allowed it to be victimized by the tyranny of the Outlook calendar and the constant avalanche of daily emails.

Enough is enough. As a leader, I am not here to “win” at email and maintain my inbox to zero. I will no longer act the martyr, painting myself as the victim of the virtual meeting schedules.

I don’t want to leave you thinking I’ve cancelled all recurring meetings and have some new practice of declining every request. On the contrary – the bulk of my workday still consists of meetings. However, I am managing to carve out precious blocks of thinking time. I find that I’m doing less multitasking during the meetings I do have because I now have dedicated time for tasks throughout the day. This vision of spaciousness in my life now allows me to bring the weight of my presence to conversations with my team, colleagues, family, and friends, which is perhaps the most significant motivation for this whole idea of simplification. When I’m able to bring all of me to what means the most to me, I find that I am more connected to my purpose and infinitely more alive.

“Most other resources on which we rely as individuals — such as food, money, and electricity — are things that facilitate life, and in some cases, it’s possible to live without them, at least for a while. Attention, on the other hand, just is life: your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.”

–Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals