One of my Letterbox Resistance efforts, designed with Canva, my new toy!
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Monday, January 2, 2017
Thoughts about time and work
No, this is not an economic analysis of anything, although economics are surely on most Indian minds now.
It's near the end of the first working day of my shiny new 2017 timetable which is still redolent with good intentions and determination. I have spent the half-the-day on my other work and taken the second half of the day for what I think of as my own or actual work.
Today, my own work has been pottering and reading at random. I have discovered articles from 2016 via the Pocket App that I installed with a view to reviving an old project. The articles I have read were interesting and thought-provoking but I will not use them anywhere. Except to think and grow.
As the day closes, I feel like I have not used it optimally. Have I achieved anything, made any progress? Ironically, one of the articles I read reflects on this need we all have to be constantly engaged in what we imagine is a purposeful fashion. We cannot just be.
This afternoon, aside from some annoying bureaucratically mandated interruptions, I have just been. I have drifted, I have read, I have had the occasional thought. My thoughts have wandered. I have not produced anything or checked off anything, so has it been a waste?
I must ask if this will be how I measure the value of my new time-table. Is the purpose of the new time-table to carve space for me to be myself--without an audience, without a goal--or is to produce X deliverables by year-end? I know the first is indispensable to the second, and I know too, that the first is now desperately necessary in my life.
Perhaps my first goal for my new time-table should be to re-define what would be a good use of my time, and start thinking of this letting go, this just-being, this reclaiming me for myself as more than enough.
PS: Incidentally, my friend and I have a new blogpact this year. We fell far short of last year's targets but are happy, like Insy Winsy Spider, to start over and try again!
It's near the end of the first working day of my shiny new 2017 timetable which is still redolent with good intentions and determination. I have spent the half-the-day on my other work and taken the second half of the day for what I think of as my own or actual work.
Today, my own work has been pottering and reading at random. I have discovered articles from 2016 via the Pocket App that I installed with a view to reviving an old project. The articles I have read were interesting and thought-provoking but I will not use them anywhere. Except to think and grow.
As the day closes, I feel like I have not used it optimally. Have I achieved anything, made any progress? Ironically, one of the articles I read reflects on this need we all have to be constantly engaged in what we imagine is a purposeful fashion. We cannot just be.
This afternoon, aside from some annoying bureaucratically mandated interruptions, I have just been. I have drifted, I have read, I have had the occasional thought. My thoughts have wandered. I have not produced anything or checked off anything, so has it been a waste?
I must ask if this will be how I measure the value of my new time-table. Is the purpose of the new time-table to carve space for me to be myself--without an audience, without a goal--or is to produce X deliverables by year-end? I know the first is indispensable to the second, and I know too, that the first is now desperately necessary in my life.
Perhaps my first goal for my new time-table should be to re-define what would be a good use of my time, and start thinking of this letting go, this just-being, this reclaiming me for myself as more than enough.
PS: Incidentally, my friend and I have a new blogpact this year. We fell far short of last year's targets but are happy, like Insy Winsy Spider, to start over and try again!
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