Setting the Best Time
SETTING THE BEST TIME
Six days work, seventh day suspend work. Not being permitted many of the week’s activities, including some of the most fulfilling ones, creates a special view of time. Most days I can create a list of what intermediate activities would prod me in the direction of the dozen goals I set for myself for each half year. Some are best done via keyboard and screen, with or without internet connection. A few require physical labor. And then there are those many would like to do’s that don’t make the final twelve. There’s my recreation, housekeeping, trips to the store for more worldly goods. Some are doable on the Sabbath, most prohibited. And then there are things that can only be done on the Sabbath, an elegant Shabbos dinner, a few hours of designated ritual in the synagogue followed by schmoozing with people not encountered since the previous week. And then there is Think Time, allowable every day but often squeezed out by urgencies. Some of the Shabbat hours default to Self Time.
My Sabbath routine in a world of Covid has resettled. Synagogue, at least my current one, typically leaves me unfulfilled. Covid offered an experiment of no in-person services and in keeping with our Orthodox practice, no Zoom surrogate. Those who want to hear the Rabbi’s sermon can watch it pre-recorded. I rarely do, though I have my routine for acquiring insights to the upcoming weekly Torah portion every Thursday. And being assigned via this crossover study to the No Shul group, that seems my preference, having experienced both arms of the crossover. That removes from allocated time to amorphous time about three hours every Shabbos morning, just waiting for creation of new beneficial habits.
Whether before shul or instead of shul, Saturday morning has its cadence. Every morning my iTouch buzzes my left wrist at 6:30AM. After agonizing post-retirement episodes of sleep deterioration, I followed sleep hygiene advice of the pros. Up same time each morning no matter what. Bedtime rituals with little variation, not as rigidly timed to the clock. No distinction between work days and non-work days. So up as usual. Then a k-cup into the machine, brewing while I retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway in night clothes irrespective of weather. Then some dishwashing which for years has relaxed me in its relative mindlessness. Carry the coffee upstairs to My Space, that post retirement room with desk, swivel chair, recliner, and big screen TV. To my left hangs a magnetized white board with the semi-annual projects listed. To my right sit two sheets of paper, the weekly projects committed the previous Sunday and yesterday’s projects. Between the list of twelve on the whiteboard and two columns of tasks on the two papers, I keep the tally. What have I accomplished, engaged in without success, or punted to a future week?
As I do this over several consecutive shabbatot, a few themes stand out. Things that have a set time to perform them get done. I have always been reliable about finishing what has been assigned to me. Every morning I make coffee, do dishes, retrieve the newspaper but let my wife read it, return to My Space to review email and Facebook, then write an entry in my personal blog. Whether I am reading the Quran or the Book of Mormon, I head off to that recliner to read the expected chapter or two. Same with literature reading which has a time slot at bedtime. On scheduled treadmill days, that gets done at about 9AM with some flexibility. I make supper most nights, typically at 6PM or so. On grocery days, I know roughly when I will go shopping.
Other things I’d like to do but don’t get done seem to lack a specified time for starting each project. Decluttering could be much further along if the activity is timed on a timer. I just don’t have a set time to start it. I have a paid writing assignment which always gets submitted on time. Those gee I’d like to express myself has the motivation, though not the secure segment of time where I will do nothing else but write no matter what. My Aerogarden needed revision. It took less than a half hour to find seeds, revise the soil in the tubes, and put new seeds in the cylinders. It took weeks to select which half hour.
I never really liked appointments with myself, but that seems how my vastly improved commitment to my treadmill sessions has gotten done. It is not habitual. Were it not for a health gain I would avoid it. But I know when I will step on, how long I will exercise, and at what intensity. When I track my finances each month, I know what day, less certain about what time, but I create one or more times depending on the complexity of the month’s transactions. I am going to need to do the same with the projects that don’t capture a defined piece of schedule. These are my writing times, hobby pursuits, travel, friendships. All projects meet SMART criteria, meaning all attainable, even the most challenging. And they are specific. But they also need better specification of the time to perform them. For the larger ones, writing in particular, they not only need a time but specificity on subject and amount I will write or research. Similar for donations, done on or about the 20th of each month. If I say I will do this when the clock strikes 9, it gets done, if not it gets postponed.
As a rule I’ve never liked being a slave to appointments. Yet several weekly reviews of done vs not done confirm that appointments to do particular activities, either habitual or arbitrary, need to be applied to my semiannual twelve with rigor.