Is it Time to Think About Your Schedule Again?

First published on March 25, 2021

'Oh no,' I think as I sit in reflection. 'It's you again.'

I've lost count of the number of times I've had this thought since I really started paying attention to the ways I was growing, eight or so years ago.

'It's you, old friend, old enemy. I thought I'd defeated you.'

But like Spider-Man's enemies, they never seem to be defeated for good. In a few comics' time, or a few year's time, The Lizard, Venom, even Dr Doom will probably be back.

And so it is with growth.

'Ugh,' I grunt to myself. 'I thought I'd fixed "relationships". But then I changed, and she changed, and the world changed. And now I have to think about it again.'

'Oh come on,' I think. 'I knew what I was working towards. Why is it feeling empty now? Why do I need to understand it more, again?'

'Oh please,' I sigh. 'I have thought about productivity and decision-making and busyness more than possibly anything else. How can there possibly be more to think?!'

And yet here I am, pondering it again. Invited by Robert Holden's work on the four intelligences and his reflection on what - in Authentic Success - he calls Insane Busyness. 'The challenges we face today do not require more effort,' Holden says. 'They require more wisdom.' And one of the ways we can pay attention to our Physical Intelligence (PQ) is to reflect on our schedule. 'What's one really smart move you can make in your schedule?' he asks. And I look at my schedule, and I see the problems with it. I see how I haven't created time for playfulness and inspiration and creativity. And I see how, once again, busyness is in my way. And yet it's not the same busyness challenges that I had before. Because I fixed them, mostly. It's a new level of sophistication that I need, a new level of awareness, a new level of wisdom.

Perhaps, on some level, busyness is the most pernicious addiction of the modern age. I've written before about how the cleverest people in the world are designing ways to steal our attention and make money from it. But the world's problems - and yours - won't be solved by more busyness any more. They'll be solved by more wisdom.

That's not to say that being busy is necessarily bad. Like any potential addiction, the question to ask is one I once heard Michael Neill pose: is it an expression of your aliveness, or is it a tool to deaden?

Another way to frame this might be a distinction from Caroline Myss: do you leave busyness feeling tired or feeling drained?

There may be a phase we have to go through of filling up our time. It may be a developmental stage that humans need to experience in order to grow to the next level. Or it may be possible to skip it all together. Perhaps in one or two more generations' time, humans will grow up in a society without the underlying assumption that harder work is always the answer, where we'll prize developing wisdom as highly as we prize developing a work-ethic.

Either way, for you, the likelihood is this: you have already filled up your time. You have already thought quite a bit about how to be more productive. You might be able to eek out another 3 or 4% productivity without it costing your soul. If you haven't thought about it already, I've written some great suggestions here. Or your soul (or your happiness, or your aliveness, or your love) may already be suffering from too much effort, too much busyness.

And so you may, like I do, have that feeling, 'Oh no. Do I really need to think about my schedule again?'

When I ask myself (or the heavens) that, the wiser part of me answers with: 'Only if you want to have more impact, to change more lives and to feel more alive while you do it. If not, you're good how you are. If so, it's more wisdom you need, and not more effort.'

Only then, do you need to think about your schedule again.