Being Deliberate, Pt. 1

One of the fundamentals of Present Tense Living is being deliberate about what you do. Being deliberate means that, to the greatest extent possible, you decide on what and with whom you are going to spend your limited time and attention. You do not let the culture or your peers decide; you decide.

Now it is unavoidable that some of our time has to be spent on activities that we may not choose to do. Most of us have to work for a living, and perhaps we work at something we wouldn't choose to do if we weren't paid to do it. Or, even if you find meaning in your work, all jobs involve some activities that are mundane or downright boring. (I call this administrivia.) This is true not just at work: if you are a parent, there are certain activities (like sitting through sports practices) that no sane person would choose to spend so much time on but which are part of the deal of having kids.

But sometimes we get swept up in what is popular and find that most of our time is spent doing stuff that "everybody" does but that isn't really meaningful to us. Not that these activities aren't fun, but they add up to more than our available time, so we find ourselves being "so busy" yet not accomplishing anything meaningful. Have you ever heard anyone say (or said yourself) "I'm on the go all the time but I never seem to get anything done."? Much of the rat race consists of doing/buying/giving attention to things merely because everyone else in our social or professional circle is doing them. This habit of keeping up with the Joneses with our time is easy to understand--we don't want to seem "different"--and difficult to break.

There are two ways to start being deliberate about your life: bottoms-up or top-down. The bottoms-up way begins with writing down every single thing you do. You could get really detailed and keep a time journal for a week or two, accounting for every hour of your day. But at a minimum, sit down and list on a sheet of paper each activity you do, both at home and outside the home, both for yourself and for others. Be as thorough as you can.

Once your list is complete, check off the things that you must do--work, commute, pick up the kids at school, make dinner for the family, etc. There are probably ways to minimize the time spent on these things, but for now we'll leave them alone and just accept that we have to do them.

Next, look at the unchecked items on your list. Before you do anything else, add to the list things that are missing: the activities you wish you had time for, but somehow never do. Now, thinking carefully about your goals, dreams, talents, and desires, rank the things on your list in order of importance to you. What do you want to spend your time on? To what do you want to direct your attention? Rank them in order of importance/interest to you. You may even want to cross some completely off the list; things you no longer want to do.

You can probably see where this is going. Once you have that list in order of priority, it is just a matter of being deliberate about making time for your important activities. You allot time first to the things you have to do, then make sure your high-priority items get some time in your day or week. After that, if you have time left, you can work in the lower-priority items, or just drop them all together.

In the next post we'll look at the top-down method for accomplishing the same thing. But the point of both methods is the same: to ensure that we are not spending our time on activities that we really don't care about, that are just a form of competition and keeping up that are every bit as prideful as spending our money on things we don't care about just to maintain appearances. In both cases, we are ceding control of our lives--whether money or time--to the culture around us. That's no way to live!

Today vs. Someday

I spent last weekend with my extended family, mourning the loss of my uncle, Tom Corts, and celebrating his life in a nice family funeral service as well as a bigger memorial service at Samford University. There is nothing like a funeral of someone who died too young to remind one that tomorrow is not promised, so make the most of today.

One of the neat stories that came out of the weekend was that on New Year's Day, members of the family sat around a table discussing their "bucket lists" (i.e., lists of things they wanted to do before they die). When Tom's turn came he stated that if he died tomorrow, there is nothing he wanted to do that he had not done. A life lived with no regrets!

Do you have regrets? Have you thought about what regrets you or your family would have if you suddenly died? Think about the various ways we live our lives in the future. Do you ever find yourself making comments like these?

• "Once the kids are grown up, then we'll be able to decorate the house."
• "When the economy recovers, then I'll change careers."
• "Once the baby grows out of diapers, then we'll start traveling."
• "When I finally make partner, I'll be able to come home for dinner every night."

All of these comments focus on the future, but what if the future doesn't come? These mental excuses take the focus off of action today and instead push it into the future. Take the last one: it takes discipline to to get up and leave the office at a decent hour, especially if everyone else then thinks you are slacking off. But how do you know you'll stop once you reach the next level? What if you then try to reach the next highest level? What if by then your family has left you because you're never around? What if you drop dead from overwork? Extreme examples, I know, but they make the point: We can't push all our supposed happiness into the future, when the future is not guaranteed. How much will we miss by doing that? We'll never know until it is too late.

We can't do everything we want here and now--that would be irresponsible (unless, of course, you really do want to work a lot). But we don't have to put everything off until tomorrow, or next year, or someday, either. It is a balance that requires us to examine our lives regularly to ensure we are keeping all facets--work, play, family, community, and self--in perspective. Then, make the most of every day.

The Unexpected

On a flight to Minneapolis this morning I passed the time reading Seneca, including this observation:

"Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.....If God adds the morrow we should accept it joyfully. The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others."

That nicely summarizes a principle of Present Tense Living: enjoy today, for today is all you have. We sometimes worry so much about tomorrow and the next day and the next that we fail to appreciate what is good about today: the bright sunshine, the joy of our family, the fun of our friends. Learn to appreciate what is good about today and you will go a long way toward conquering the power of worry over your life, which will lead to contentment.

Elsewhere Seneca writes to "practice" your death--in other words, to finish every day saying "I have lived" (quoting Virgil) and being satisfied with your life, as if when you fall asleep you will never wake up. It sounds morbid at first, but with such practice you truly will learn to view each day as a gift. You don't have to think you are going to die every night; but as your head hits the pillow, why not utter the simple prayer: "Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of today."

"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!" Practice "dying" and you will live more abundantly each day.

With those thoughts in mind this morning, I deplaned in Minneapolis to find an urgent message waiting for me from my dad with unexpectedly stunning news: my uncle, Thomas Edward Corts, aged 67, a mentor to me during my years at Samford and one of the most generous people I have ever known, died suddenly of a heart attack this morning. And so it hit me: you can "prepare" for your own death, but there is almost no preparation you can do for the sudden loss of a loved one. It is going to hurt, and your reactions are unpredictable until it happens.

Tom and Marla were surrogate parents to me during my college years, formative years during which their strong presence was an unqualified blessing. During my years as a young banker in Birmingham, making only $22,000 a year, Tom paid for countless dinners out for me, and even more valuable were the hours of conversation that I enjoyed with him and Marla, discussing Samford, family, Birmingham life, and the people in our lives. I was inspired by his work ethic, high personal standards, integrity, and eloquence in written and spoken word. I have especially thought often of his generosity to me, and have looked for opportunities to pay it back by passing it on to others in need. I will miss his wise counsel and good example.

So enjoy your own today, but be sure to enjoy the days you have with your friends and loved ones too. Every day is precious for every person; resolve today to reach out to a friend you haven't spoken to in a while; a family member you've not seen; an acquaintence you need to know better. Each day is a gift for you, and an opportunity for you to give of yourself to someone else. Seize that opportunity!

Control Your Environment

In a recent interview with Leo Babauta, Tim Ferriss makes the interesting observation that it is easier to control your environment than to control your behavior. This has interesting implications for all those new year's resolutions that are probably already starting to weaken by now: they often involve trying to change or control behavior, which is hard to do, and so they fail.

How might it look to control an environment instead of a behavior?

• Diet: Clear all dessert out of the house (control the environment) instead of trying to control your impulse to eat the chocolate cookie dough ice cream sitting in the freezer.
• Time management: if web surfing takes away a lot of your productive time, try not even opening your web browser (control your computing environment) unless you absolutely need to check something for the project you are working on.
• Exercise: try parking in the most distant parking lot everywhere you go (control your environment), which will force you to walk more. It may not train you for a marathon, but this simple practice will certainly get you moving more.
• Attention management: if you've resolved to spend more time with a partner, kids, or other loved one, make a house rule: no electronics (Blackberries, cell phones, landline phones, Nintendos, etc.) at the dinner table, and everyone has to sit down to eat. This controlled environment will force you to converse with those around you for at least the time it takes you to eat, and thus you can avoid the modern affliction of being "home alone together" (because everyone is in their own separate electronic universe).

Are you struggling to keep up a resolution? Think about how controlling the environment around you might boost your chances of success in changing your behavior.

Theory vs. Practice

I realized while leading a discussion about the Theology of Enough on Sunday that at some point, one must move on from merely thinking about priorities and the concepts of living in the present tense, and start actually taking concrete steps toward doing something about it. As fun as it is to sit and think about simplifying life, and reducing commitments, and rearranging priorities, and all the other indicators of present tense thinking, eventually something must actually be done about it. And that is when I realized I need to do more thinking about practical application.

What does Present Tense Living actually mean? How will you know you are actually doing it, or moving toward it? How do you overcome hurdles that get in your way of executing it? This will be my focus over the coming weeks, trying to develop a framework for living. I think it will be less than a 12-step method, but more than just "think about it."

Out of illness, a lesson

Nothing like a good bout with bronchitis to force me to slow down, and to throw into sharp relief what in my life really is a priority. It's amazing how many work projects and meetings turned out to be "optional" after all--no one wanted a coughing sicko there, and now I find I'm not out of the loop at all upon my return--and so it make me wonder how much of my usual workday is just busywork and unnecessary. There were a couple of important deadlines that did need to be kept, and I submitted my work from my quarantined office at home, and the world moved on. The true priorities rise to the top when you have limited time to work.

I listened to Leo Babauta's interview with Merlin Mann last week, and Merlin makes the point that if you have to ask yourself if something is a priority, then it is not. Priorities are obvious and clear. A good point to remember the next time you sit down to devote 30 minutes to re-prioritizing your to-do list instead of actually doing work.

Over-leveraged Time

As society works down its overload of financial leverage, I am amazed by various experts advising a "back to basics" approach to life: saving (a little at a time); investing (cash first, then riskier markets); career (focus on doing your best at the job you have now); dressing (more formal business attire is coming back). I will be interested to see if a simpler approach to time management becomes similarly faddish.

I believe our time has become as overextended as our finances. For too long, busy-ness has been a badge of importance; leisure has been equated with lazy. As a result, we don't sleep enough, we degrade our work through multitasking, and we stress ourselves out trying to lots of things competently rather than focusing on a few things and doing them well. The result: life feels like a 24-hour race. The rat race.

I don't know how a time deleveraging might look. Will people begin working fewer hours? Seems doubtful when one is trying to avoid a layoff. Will volunteer hours suffer? Perhaps, though people may substitute time for cash donations to causes they really care about. Will TV watching decline? One can only hope.

For me, I've vowed to identify and try to stop the time wasters that eat out chunks of my day, often without me realizing it. Blog reading on esoteric subjects; long conversations about non-business matters with co-workers; endless trying of new productivity tools instead of actually being productive. None of these things is bad in and of itself, or as an occacional diversion. But I sometimes find that they become the point of my day, not a sideline to it.

Control them, and I'll have more time for the things I really want to do: talk with Sylvia, play with the kids, read, improve my golf game. I shouldn't feel I have to "borrow" time to do these things I love; by breaking my bad habits, I can make them the focus of how I spend my time. I will be the richer for it.