Writing with Purpose When Time Is Scarce
A post from the archives!
In this first installment of a series on writing with multiple demands on your time, I look at the practice of focusing on your priorities rather than just time. We have more demands on our time than we have actual time to complete them, so one solution is to identify which tasks, responsibilities, and people receive priority attention that corresponds to our energy and effort.
Time is a limited resource that cannot be magically increased, so one way to deal with this reality is to focus on managing your priorities first. The key is to set your own mission and values as the basis for your priorities, and then allocate your time accordingly.
We will wrestle with this concept today because, obviously, it is easier said than done.
Essentialism
In Greg McKeown's Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, he emphasizes the importance of focusing on what truly matters by identifying and prioritizing essential tasks. McKeown suggests that by managing priorities rather than time, individuals can avoid the trap of busyness without productivity.
Essentialism encourages a deliberate and disciplined approach to decision-making, where choices are aligned with long-term goals and values. By saying no to non-essential tasks and commitments, individuals can create space for what truly adds value and contributes to their overall success and fulfillment. This mindset shift from "doing it all" to "doing what matters most" enables individuals to achieve greater clarity, effectiveness, and satisfaction in both their personal and professional lives.
The concept also reminds me of Pareto’s principle, which I discuss here:
As I wrote in that post,
When considering Pareto’s Principle, you must ask yourself, “How much time will this take and how much of an impact will it make towards X goal?” If the time it will take isn’t equivalent to the payoff, then how can you minimize your investment in it? Can you lower your standards? Can you delegate it? Can you say no? It's similar to asking your phone's GPS to find the fastest route to your front door. You could just go on autopilot without a strategy, but would that be the most efficient use of your time?
But what does essentialism look like in practice?
The concept of essentialism probably makes complete logical sense to most of us, but we all also know that this is much easier said than done in practice. In practice, it means
saying no to requests and opportunities, even if we want to or feel compelled to say yes
lowering our standards so that not all work gets our best effort and being okay with that
holding on to your priorities when everything in our jobs seems so dire and vital
disappointing others or at least dealing with the fear that we are disappointing others
making people wait for answers that we deem non-essential
I’ve discussed before that academics as a genre of humans are not accustomed to giving B- or C-level effort on any of our work, so it’s hard to lower our standards for even the less essential tasks.
On top of this, job precarity and the tenure system make us believe that we have to give 110% effort to everything we do, so we wind up feeling like a failure when we actually don’t have that much time and effort to actually contribute our best.
Something has to give, and I recommend you give up some of the sand.
A metaphor of sand and rocks
I recently heard a metaphor for priorities that I thought was quite apt. When I searched the internet for the source, I discovered that it is quite common, so I am not sure where it came from, but here goes.
Imagine you have a jar. If you have large rocks and you put them in first, they will fit in the jar with ease. If you instead fill the jar with sand first and then try to put in the rocks, the rocks will likely not fit as easily.
The sand in this metaphor represents all the non-essential activities that consume our time. The rocks, then, are our top priorities.
It can be helpful to use this metaphor to think about what is most important to you in your life and career. If you know that publishing is the key to securing tenure and that is your primary goal, for example, and you fill your jar with sand each week instead of your publishing priority rock, you will not be able to fit it until the rock is added first.
For each of your week, the writing rock has to go in first if that’s the priority. If your health is a priority, then making time for rest is vital. If being present for bedtime with your kids is one of your rocks, then put that in first. If teaching is one of your rocks, then by all means, put that in first.
Some challenges
The challenges are: a) determining what your rocks are; 2) evaluating all opportunities and requests to determine if they are rocks or just sand; and 3) dealing with the consequences if your priorities and your institutions don’t align.
The advantage of essentialism is that each person can determine their priorities, which makes it a malleable strategy in theory. But a downside to McKeown's approach is that it doesn’t take into account that some people’s priorities align more with institutional or societal expectations than others, which makes it easier to assert those priorities.
For example, if you’re a caregiver and that’s one of your main priorities in life, your institution might not support that to the same degree if you make writing research one of your main priorities. And obviously, caregiving is disproportionate labor for women, so we can begin to see how essentialism is easier said than done for many of us when we consider what our institutions value or demand from us.
With these challenges noted, I do think this strategy can still be helpful for gaining clarity around what you want to prioritize and making conscious decisions about putting those rocks in first.
So, what say you? Are you ready to pour out some of the sand from your week? I am pouring it out and squishing my toes in it right now, which is a much better use of sand.
In subsequent posts in this series on writing when you have multiple demands on your time, I will delve deeper into the strategies of saying "no," doing "good enough," and removing things from your plate.
Great post, Jenn - thanks for this!