Today’s Cultivate
2012 prompt:
Time is a valuable resource. Did you spend your time wisely this year?
What can you do to cultivate more quality in your time during 2013?
I had to get a cup of coffee to write to this prompt. Ugh.
Time is one of my “things”. I have been called a Time Nazi – not a very pleasant term at all – but I have a tendency to be really prickly about being late. I have a very low threshold for people being late or for myself being late.
In the mornings I walk around as if I was stage managing: I tell Emma, “fifteen til we leave!” to which she says “Thanks, 15!” and I count down by five minute increments. By the calls to “5” and “I’m walking out the door!” she is no longer humored, she is grouchy and snappy and the way most normal fifteen-year-old girls are early in the morning.
That is in my family management, though, not in my personal business, creative and life management.
This year I have pulled back from a lot of my former “time sucks”. I have become a much better “steward of my time.” Today, for example, I am working in 30 minute increments. I am facing a deadline today, so for my reverb writing (which has been ridiculously eye opening this year) I am only spending five minutes to write each post. I am timing myself and sticking to it.
I am intermingling writing with chores, my grading – it is
the end of the semester and it is due today, no ifs ands or buts, and other
stuff I choose to throw in.
Working in small chunks always helps me get things done and it flexes my “laser like quality time” as well. I’ve been a Mom for twenty two years now. I have learned from parenting how to work in very short chunks and how to work around the needs of my children.
For now – and throughout December – I will be using that model of spending my time in chunks.
In 2013, I will do that, but in addition I will blend in my questioning technique I have been using. I start my day, for example, with asking myself, “How will I build my business today?” which I stuff into the back of my mind and my subconscious comes up with a few brilliant ideas which I enact as efficiently as possible in with my other stuff.
Perhaps this is why chunking works: I write down what my subconscious brings and ta-da, begin enacting it with an hour. This makes my subconscious very pleased so the ideas just keep coming.
I feel much better about time than when I started writing.
It’s the magic of Cultivating and Reverbing. YES!
Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!)
© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
Recent Comments