Ep 4: It's OK to Protect Your Time
It's easy to think we should be hyper productive because we're at home more than we've ever been, but that's not true. Prioritizing rest and relaxation right now is more vital than ever. On today’s episode of Win the Day with Fred Curtis, we discuss the value of protecting your time.
Audio Transcript
In this time of quarantine and isolation there’s been a tendency among some people and organizations to assume they can ask for more of your time because they know a lot of people are at home and do not have the opportunity to indulge in their normal comings and goings. I know this because an organization I formerly worked with struggled a bit to provide time and space for people to come to grips with the fact that we’re in a global pandemic.
But spending more time in the house does not mean that people have more available free time. Many of us are a part of the extremely fortunate group of individuals that have the capabilities to work from home and do not have much uncertainty around our livelihoods right now. In many cases that means that folks are working more than 40 hours a week. And it likely means that there’s a chance that work is not as productive and efficient as it used to be with so many distractions and valid anxiety around the time that we’re living in.
Now let me be incredibly clear that those of us fortunate enough to still have an income and not have to leave the house for it are extremely lucky, but that doesn’t mean the process of continuing in our employment doesn’t trigger mental health challenges in and of itself.
And so I was thinking and meditating long and hard about how I process the needs that I currently have to work both of my businesses 60-65 hours a week and make time to continue to cultivate and build relationships with loved ones, and also have time to enjoy hobbies and rest and relaxation. And in my meditation on how to approach my life I came up with three things to help us protect and maximize our time for what seems like is a pandemic that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Number one is creating a routine. If you’re attempting to juggle multiple projects or assignments in this time, maybe you’re still trying to find a way to get intense in home workouts while doing your day job and cooking meals, do your best to sit down and create a calendar or schedule for yourself that you can reasonably adhere to. A couple weeks ago I sat down and merged all of my calendars and said on WEdnesday evenings I do absolutely no work after 5 PM. On Thursday and Friday mornings I only work on writing my books. Thinking about what days and times you are your best and for what tasks and objectives can be tremendously helpful.
The second thing is equally important, and that’s giving yourself grace when you are unable or simply unwilling to follow said routine. Now I know that may sound a little counterproductive, but I will continue to remind everyone that we are living in a global pandemic, and that we should all give ourselves even more grace when we are unable to or simply do not feel like executing on our prescribed plan. These are times of high anxiety and stress. If you want to work on client cultivation or run two miles two days in a row, great! If you want to binge watch Keeping up with the Kardashians, that’s fine too. Nothing and no one should allow you to feel like you’re less productive or mentally strong because you need to take time to fully step away and decompress.
Which leads me to my last point, and that is that you should prioritize protecting your time. There are some days or string of days in which the most mentally healthy thing for you is to unplug. To shut your cognitive workload down each and everyday at a particular time. Whether or not people acknowledge it or see it manifested in their life in an easily recognizable way, there’s stress on each and every one of us right now, and if and when you identify times in which one of the fifty-leven zoom calls or dozens of unanswered text messages perhaps isn’t in your best interest to engage with, give yourself permission to step away and say “I cannot do this today.”
These are pretty troubling times as you know, but one of the most important things we can do to stay mentally strong is to be intentional about protecting how we mange and delegate our time, and we want to allow ourselves to give our free time to. And we do these things because we are not worthless, we are not a failure, we are worthy of life, and we are worth of love.
Go win the day.