Time

You might look at my blog title and think this is a post about the passage of time, or about time as a phenomenon in and of itself. But no. This is about the lack of time.

There was once a time when I thought I was busy. I took 21 college credit hours in a semester. I also participated in musical ensembles through percussion and ran the student newspaper. In retrospect, though, that was cake.

Somehow, I still managed to play video games, hang out with friends, talk with my girlfriend, and even follow some sports teams. But I thought I was swamped.

Maybe that's a weird human condition, to constantly think there is less time than there really is. Or, probably more accurately, we try to wear our own busy-ness like a badge of honor. "Man, I was up until 4 a.m. doing work." "Oh yeah? I only slept for a minute. And I was drinking coffee during that minute."

I suppose this makes us look like hard workers? Or maybe it gives us a built-in excuse when things go wrong. We can default to how busy we are when something doesn't work out. "I couldn't do it because I was doing 800 other things."

Lately I've been trying to make a conscious effort to restore some solid balance to my life. Yes, that does mean being more productive, but it also means spending more time with my family when I can. I hate going home and having to work when I should be playing with my daughter. Those two things go hand in hand. If I can get more done during the day, then I can enjoy my time at home easier.

There are some tricks I'm going to try to do to make this happen:

1. Grade at debate meets. There's a lot of work into coaching debate. However, there's not a lot of work that goes into sitting around waiting for my kids to get out of rounds. That's arguably almost 7 hours of potential productivity. 
2. Important work early. I found out about this cool thing called a circadian rhythm, which goes about every 6 hours. I'm going to make an effort to time my important work for when I'm feeling energized (early morning), light work for 1:00 p.m.-ish. 
3. Coffee. Just. Yeah. 
4. Less multitasking. I don't think it works. I don't think it ever has worked. Time on one task should be time on ONLY that task. 
5. Destroy my phone - maybe I would be more productive if I had a faster phone. I doubt it, though. I think I do better when my phone is doing something else. Like, not being around me.