[2021-08-18] No one has time for everything

At many points in my life, I tried to do it all—as a boss, a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a community member. I often forgot that no one has time for everything, as I attempted to squeeze as much productivity out of my days as possible.

Now that I'm essentially retired, it is certainly easier to fit in the things I want to do. That said, I am conscious of the counsel of many retirees who have told me that I'll never be busier. As much as I feel that I can do everything, I need to be careful not to repeat old habits of overcommitting myself.

So far, so good. I am enjoying having time to walk every day, to make food from the bounty of produce available at this time of year, to do projects around the house, and to be there for my family (such as hunting for an apartment with my son, doing errands with my husband, and discovering new food markets with my daughter).

I am choosing where I invest my time, consistent with the advice of time coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders. In her 2013 article How to Allocate Your Time, and Your Effort, Saunders asserts: "Given the pace of work and the level of input in modern society...You can no longer fit everything in—no matter how efficient you become." This has never been more true.

Saunders encourages her clients to see time for what it is: a limited resource, like money, that should be invested most on activities that produce the biggest bang for the buck and least on activities that deliver little or no greater return for additional effort.

She divides activities into one of three categories:
  1. Investment – those where an increased amount of time and a higher quality of work can lead to an exponential payoff. These merit A‑level effort.
  2. Neutral – those that need to be done adequately but on which more time doesn't necessarily mean a significantly larger payoff. These deserve B‑level effort.
  3. Optimize – those for which additional time spent leads to no added value and keeps you from doing other, more valuable activities. These would be fine with C‑level effort.

The goal is to minimize the time spent on "optimize" activities so that you can maximize your time spent on "investment" activities.

Saunders recommends eight techniques to implement her time investment philosophy:
  1. "Decide where you will not spend time." This is a great place to start. It's like decluttering: deciding what you'll get rid of, thus making more space for what you'll keep. In the home, this could mean leaving certain tasks to others in the family. At work, this could include delegating tasks to employees.
  2. "Strategically allocate your time." Saunders recommends that you set boundaries on how and when you invest time in work and in your personal life. I remember years ago hearing an executive say, "You'll have to get the document to me by Thursday because I don't work on weekends." I admired this approach even if I wasn't very good at applying it myself. Saunders says, "one of the most compelling reasons for not working extremely long hours is that this investment of time resources leaves you with insufficient funds for activities like exercise, sleep, and relationships."
  3. "Set up automatic time investment." Saunders likens this to setting up automatic financial investments, such as monthly contributions to an RRSP. She writes: "your daily and weekly routines should make your time investment close to automatic." A consistent theme in the books I've been reading recently is that routines are essential to making habits stick. Without them, investments in yourself will always be haphazard and easily overtaken by other commitments, especially demands from work. Saunders suggests setting up a recurring appointment two afternoons a week to move forward on key projects, and signing up for an outside activity to get away from work once or twice a week to pursue a personal interest.
  4. "Aim for a consistently balanced time budget." Saunders acknowledges that you can't achieve constant balance, but it is possible to reach a consistent balance, measured over the course of a week or two. I don't reach 10,000 steps every day, but I always cover at least 70,000 steps in a week, as some days I greatly exceed my target, which makes up for the occasions when I fall short.
  5. "At the start of each week, clearly define the most important investment activities and block out time on your calendar to complete them early in the week and early in your days." While I did this fairly often in my professional life, I was much less likely to do it at home. I'm trying to do this in retirement, as I wrote in MITs and other habits. Saunders says that making time for important tasks naturally forces us to do everything else in the remaining time.
  6. "When you look over your daily to-do list, put an 'I' [for investment] 'N' [for neutral] or 'O' [for optimize] beside each item and then allocate your time budget accordingly." One of the subtle shifts I've made in recent months is to write my blog posts in the evenings, rather than in the afternoons. I found that I was avoiding starting other projects because I was researching or writing posts for a considerable portion of the day. Now, my writing time is restricted to after supper or even later if I've done an activity in the evening.
  7. "If you start working on something and realize that it's taking longer than expected, ask yourself, 'What's the value and/or opportunity cost in spending more time on this task?'" Saunders says that if the activity is a good investment, you should take time away from other activities. If it's adding little or no value and preventing you from doing more valuable activities, get it done as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort, or delegate it.
  8. "If you keep a time diary or mark the time you spent on your calendar, you can also look back over each week and determine if you allocated your time correctly to maximize the payoff on your time investment." I used to keep a daily log, recording what I had achieved in areas that were important to me, such as exercise, contributing to the home, and writing. Just knowing that I wanted to have something positive to record in my daily log inspired me to include important activities in my day. I've attempted to revive my daily log, but haven't yet succeeded in doing so. It's a work in progress.

After the difficult year many of us have had, it's a good time to evaluate where we have been spending our time and whether we are getting an appropriate return on that investment.

For me, anything related to my health—such as walking, eating well, and getting adequate sleep—is an "investment" activity. The same is true of my writing and of time spent with family. As I wrote in Long may it continue, my priorities always seem to come back to what Naval Ravikant said: "Three things in life—your health, your mission, and the people you love. That's it."