Never enough

I’m not supposed to say that, am I? “Enough” of all things, I promised myself. I have enough. I am enough. Well.

Not long ago I read an essay about the myth of “busy”, and how we should all stop kidding ourselves that we don’t have enough time. “Unless you have small children,” came the rapid qualification, just in time to deflect my wrath/self-loathing (depending on mood). “Then, you are legitimately short of time.” So there you have it: external confirmation. I do not have enough.

Part of me thinks I’m just slacking. Part of me thinks I could totally do All The Things if I just got organised. (And maybe if I upgraded my pooter to a machine that isn’t on permanent go-slow.) And I did start the year with a rather lovely time management system (kind of a soft-around-the-edges block scheduling thing, with a particular focus for each day of the week and even for each week of the month) and grand ambitions. Some good things have come of it: I’ve devised better systems for managing my photos as I take them, and I have a slightly better grasp of what my priorities are at any given time. But am I actually keeping up, as I hoped? 

Guess. Go on, guess.

Comes a point where you have to acknowledge that no matter how beautifully scheduled your week, you can’t actually create extra hours out of thin air. They have a way of coming out of your sleep budget, and running a deficit there is not productive. At all. Comes a point where the word “priorities” grabs you by the cognitive shoulders and shakes, hard, until you concede that it doesn’t just mean choosing the order in which you do things, but choosing which things actually get done. (Clue: maybe only a quarter of your to-do items will really make the cut.) 

Despite all this, I have actually been getting some stuff done – watch this space. And I feel pretty great about that. I’ll take my victories where I can.