I should really write in this thing again sometime... one day... when I have free time to spend on things other than GMAT studying and trip planning and essay writing and reference cultivating.
What would it be like to live with every moment of your day planned out in advance? Or what if you threw out the schedule altogether, and nothing was ever planned at all? How would it feel to have no reason to think ahead because it's already mapped out for you? Or to never think ahead because you decide in the moment what feels right? Would both of these extremes lead to a greater sense of immediacy and presence in what you're doing moment to moment? Or would they be so extreme and limiting that you would feel desperate and out of control?
These are some of the questions I will explore on a new adventure for the next three weeks - an adventure I'd like you to join me on, as I record some of my observations and reflect on topics of personal motivation, structure, and focus in our lives. I will update this blog entry as I go, and invite you to comment on anything I say and your own reflections on these topics of how we experience our everyday lives.
WEEK ONE - TOTAL STRUCTURE: Plan out every hour of my entire week in advance and follow it to the letter of the law. Furthermore, plan it out the way I THINK I should live it, including more exercise than I might normally get and more focused attention to get priority things checked off my to do list. I'd better schedule a little relaxation time too so I don't lose my mind. This first week is the reason why I initially wanted to do this project - just to make sure I get things done, see if I can live this way (though I've been informed that others think I already live this way).
WEEK TWO - TOTAL FREEDOM: Plan nothing in advance. Focus on what I'm doing until I'm ready to be done doing it, and then decide what is next. Make no advanced commitments, and avoid falling into old patterns about what I think I want to do or should accomplish. Question what could be next and explore spontaneity. This week is the reason I probably SHOULD actually do this project, and the place where I truly have the most to explore. I might actually manage to do something completely unexpected.
WEEK THREE - TOTAL BALANCE: Contemplate how to find a balance between these extremes. Given my observations from the previous two weeks, try to develop a new norm without necessarily just falling into how I always used to do it. Already I have in mind some of the lessons I will learn along the way, but they're not really lessons if I can plan it out, are they? Hopefully by the time I reach this point, the project's nature will have changed for me.
Motivation. Structure. Focus. These topics are central to who I am. I think they're central to who we all are and how we live our daily lives, but I do have a feeling that I think about them more than most. If I'm going to spend my days focusing so much on how I can find continued energy to keep motivated and keep working, while cultivating a healthy body and mind and allowing relaxation time to stay sane ... I might as well really dive in and try something a little whacky. This may be an opportunity to deepen the insights I already have, discover new ones, or maybe just confirm that the messy approximation of balance we live in is pretty appealing compared to the alternatives.
THE JOURNAL
8/29/10 (Sunday): The experiment begins tomorrow. Already I'm feeling a bit tired and constrained by the amount of effort I've had to put into planning out my week. I find myself developing an appreciation for how effective it is to play the smaller things in life by ear. Planning my exact menu for the week to include the days I don't have time to cook is much harder than I expected. Yet somehow if I wasn't planning this out, I'd get fed. Then again, it might be in a less healthy or affordable way. Such is the trade off. I'll be curious to see how much I appreciate or dislike the fact that I've already made my decisions about what to eat this week.
9/3/10 (Friday, Week 1): I like this experiment less every day. I was energized at first, ready to settle down into some of its routine and the satisfaction of getting things accomplished. But it has seemed to feel an awful lot like my normal life half the time, and a pain in the rear the other half.
The Structure of Health I have to admit: this has got to be the most consistently well fed, slept, exercised and meditated I've ever been in my life. Somehow I expected that taking care of myself so well would lead to feeling great, being cheerful and motivated. As a general rule, that is in fact how it works for me. But I don't feel that much better than usual. (Maybe because I'm actually pretty good at staying healthy normally anyhow?) In fact, I seem to have trouble getting over feeling crabby for having to get up and exercise even when I feel exhausted. I can't help but wonder though if this would wear off and I'd gain the most benefit if I could continue on this way for longer. I think a high degree of structure IS important for these kinds of healthy choices so that they become ingrained as true habits and eventually stop being something you agonize over. I've thought that for a long time. Somehow I just seem to lack the motivation to be disciplined enough a lot of the time.
Social Flexibility Predictably, the biggest challenges to keeping my schedule have been outside influences like people suddenly remembering they had other plans for the night. Normally I'd say "let's get together on Wednesday instead," but in this case that isn't an option. So I did my best to continue with the plan, alone. I think it's pretty obvious that one of the important reasons why we don't live completely structured lives is to make space for the people we care about and important unexpected happenings. It hasn't been TOO much of a problem so far though. Just annoying. Causing me to say "I hate this experiment" a number of times. Probably not the best attitude.
Short of Immersion Due to the nature of my job, I'm not imposing the rules of the experiment during my work day, so the main parts of my day that feel very structured are mornings and evenings. I think I find it more difficult to take the structured periods seriously and maintain the motivation to stay on schedule due to this back and forth nature. Not much to be done about it - but I do wonder if that suggests that in some ways a more extreme/complete approach really is ideal to truly stay on task. It seems that as I stick to my schedule, a certain sort of energy is slowly built up, but it's dissipated when I switch to a different mode of operating. There's no time to just fully settle into the structure, the predictability, the simplicity of being where I am doing what I am. This weekend may present more of an opportunity to do that though. I will add another report soon.
P.S. I was just about to add a little section about cheating, how I keep trying to bend my own rules. Then I realized I'm 7 minutes over time for writing this, and I should stop trying to bend the rules. Time to move onto the next scheduled task. Yes, I know, writing this also took like another 1 minute or something over my time. Irony.
9/21 (Tuesday, Week 4): Wait, what? Week 4? You thought this was a three week experiment, didn’t you?
I think I’m overdue to provide an update on my experience.
Resisting Control Due to the level of planning in the first week, I got some good things accomplished, and I was in good health. But I never reached a point of settling into the routine and feeling a sense of calmness as I somewhat expected to happen. To the contrary, I never got past feeling tired and strained by the constraints on me, and I actually lost the motivation to stick to the letter of the law as the week wore on. By the last day, I was following the spirit of my plans rather than the actual schedule, making sure I did the same things for about the same length of time but moving them around to make it more bearable.
Rules of the Game One of the most defining features of both that week and the following week was lots of debates with myself and others about what was and was not allowed within the structure of my experiment. Could I make advanced plans during week two if I felt in the moment like making them? How much should I emphasize pleasure and doing what seemed easy and appealing, versus emphasizing substance and doing what struck me as a good idea? My conception of week two was unclear compared to week one, leaving me uncertain of what I was doing and why. When I stopped to ask myself what I really felt like doing, all too often I found myself short on ideas for things that seemed appealing, and short on energy to execute.
Failure My most clear conclusion from the experiment so far is that lack of structure does not become me. Truly letting myself decide in the moment what I felt like doing, I didn’t get out of bed until the last minute, I didn’t wash the dishes, and I didn’t eat as well (or as often) as usual. Furthermore, within a few days of this, I felt terrible. Maybe it was worth the experience to run to the grocery store at 10pm for pizza and ice cream, or to discover that I’d still end up washing the dishes because they’d stink so badly after a few days that I’d genuinely want to wash them just to make the smell go away. I reached a point where I was tired and achey and hungry enough that I craved exercise, craved fresh vegetables and early bed times. And yet, all of those things somehow became unattainable, too much work. As a result of feeling so terribly run down by the end of the week, I switched the rules of the game to make week 3 just a recovery from week 2, a transition back towards better health and getting some things off my checklist.
Fearlessness Probing the possibilities of what it could mean to be more spontaneous during week 2, just one has stayed with me as significant and important: fearlessness. If I have a spontaneous idea to eat ice cream for dinner instead of a balanced meal, that’s probably just avoidance, a temptation to do the easy thing, and something that I won’t be so thrilled about later. Ignoring that idea and going with the original plan is not boring and predictable – it’s just plain smart. However, if I have a spontaneous idea to email someone whose work I admire and ask them to lunch to discuss some questions I have, not following through is more a reflection of fear than responsibility. We’re all afraid of making idiots of ourselves, of taking the wrong risks. And sometimes not doing something is the right choice in a risk trade off. But a lot of the time it’s not, and it’s worth moving forward even when we’re not sure in order to practice this kind of gutsiness. Amidst eating too many empty carbs and spending more money on unnecessary things than usual, week 2 also led me to send a number of messages to people I haven’t met but who I’d like to. That was worth something, even if I haven’t heard back, and it gave me some momentum from which I’m still benefiting.
Structures breeds spontaneity During my week of structure, I couldn’t wait for the next week to begin. In the middle of working on projects, I’d constantly have great ideas about other things I wanted to do and felt all this spontaneous energy building up. Day one of week two began, and I had nothing. All of my options seemed grim, and I spent 3 hours just debating how to start my day. It rapidly occurred to me that to be more spontaneous, I needed that structure at the same time. I needed to be engaged in things already as a matter of course in order for something unexpected to present itself. Perhaps this is a contradiction for some people, but it makes perfect sense to me. It’s like giving a poet the structure of a sonnet or an artist the limits of a medium. Constraints breed creativity.
The New Rules The three weeks of my experiment were more exhausting and less rewarding than I’d counted on. That being the case, I’m not going to waste the lessons learned. I’m expanding the week of balance to three weeks of balance. By the time that period is “over,” I hope many of its characteristics will be permanent habits for me. Here are the guidelines I've put together for these next three weeks:
Structure Not everyone thrives within structure the way I do (or crashes so phenomenally just from getting only 7 hours of sleep a night and eating fewer vegetables). But I’m a firm believer in the merits of structure in our lives, particularly as it relates to self care. Making food, sleep, and exercise into habits frees up mental energy for other endeavors in more ways than one. They decrease the amount of willpower needed to get through the day effectively, and even reduce the number of openings for us to debate with ourselves about whether we have the willpower.
- Sleep: Wake up and go to bed at strict times, with specific routines for various daily tasks to match.
- Food and exercise: Plan 1-2 days in advance at a time and stick with the plan unless the reason not to is exceptionally good. This takes off the pressure of planning too much at once while taking off the pressure of making the right decision in the moment.
- Tasks/projects: Similar to food and exercise plans, reflect every day or two about what current priorities should be and have specific plans for what to accomplish each day.
Freedom While the outward structure for these weeks will seem more like my structured week, they will be infused with the spirit of spontaneity and freedom.
- Exceptions: Changes of plan and new ideas in the moment are taken as a matter of course as far as how I’m spending my allotted waking hours. Flimsy excuses for not following through on my tasks for the day are not tolerated, but redirections of priorities are welcomed.
- Fearlessness: Remember to be gutsy, do the things that really follow through on my goals, and set aside invalid excuses.
- Enjoyment: Allow space to rest, and use the container of structure to notice how enjoyable all the experiences within it can be.
Did I really learn anything new from my experiment so far? Probably not. What I’ve outlined here as my plan for the next few weeks isn’t even much different from how I’ve always sought to live my daily life previously. But sometimes it helps to bring a new degree of intentionality into the picture, add a new dimension or angle, wake ourselves up a little bit to the life in front of us. Perhaps this was more of a giant reminder for me than a new exploration – an experience of saying to myself “See, remember, this is what happens when you try to control yourself too much. This is what happens when you don’t take care of yourself. And this is what happens when you tweak the balance just right – unleashing the most energy possible into your life.” We’ll see about that last part.
Updated structure:
Week one: Structure
Week two: Freedom
Week three: Recovery
Weeks four-six: Balance
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