Yunmen Wenyan, a famous Chinese Chan master, addressed his monks and asked, “I do not ask about before the 15th of the month; tell me about after the 15th.”
When nobody from the crowd could answer, he answered, “Every day is a good day.”
- Use calendars for coordination. Don't let them become a scorecard.
- A routine is useful only till it starts feeling like a handcuff.
- A plan on paper means little if the energy for it is missing.
Humans have been evolving for 6 million years and have developed many senses (more than 20, I guess) to play the ultimate game of survival. The best sense (not biological), however, according to me, is “intuitiveness” because of how we can predict things and often go wrong. Every action we take is, in one way or another, an attempt to survive the present and protect what matters now, not simply follow a deferred plan waiting in the future.
A calendar, in a broader context, is what I imply when referring to routines that place invisible handcuffs in your path to success. On the other hand a clock refers to your innate behaviour towards doing something without any strings attached. People often schedule irrelevant things in the future in the hope that they will eventually achieve them, but in many cases, it becomes a destructive control mechanism where your impulsiveness wins over discipline. Imagine you’ve been imprisoned for 10 years, and on the day of getting free, they refuse to open your handcuffs.
How do you remember your nth wedding anniversary if it did not meet your expectations or did not happen at all? Does the date help you remember it in the future? On the other hand, if it went well, what matters more: the date or the moment?
Early in my last 5 years of getting healthier, I needed to improve my biomarkers, gain muscle, and lose fat, but scheduling events usually went against my favour. My dietician and training coach suggested inflexible, pre-scheduled timings so they could feel good and I could tick the boxes, but I mostly missed them due to workload or family commitments. One man’s reason is another man’s excuse, they say. For me, the return on investment was my health, so I stopped my subscription with the consultants and started working out with flexibility. I chose my days, focused on my health, and built micro-habits that do wonders if followed and don’t do significant damage if missed. Of course, there are sacrifices to be made, but it certainly doesn’t put invisible handcuffs around you.
The same problem shows up at work. We clog our working days with irrelevant events, thinking that an ideal day would be a game of skipping stones from Takeshi’s Castle. They are quite accurate most of the time because any part of that block of time in your calendar may not go as per your plan, and you may even get a taste of muddy waters.
For most people, calendar events are a turn-off when they see what’s ahead instead of getting excited. It gives you the same feeling as when you are on a roller coaster and it is at some point or angle, and the worst thing is that it isn’t moving. Many people decorate their calendars with different colours, expecting others to believe that they are the most productive people. My point is not that I am anti-meeting or that time-boxing doesn’t work, but I am against anti-anti-communication. Pointless scheduling / overscheduling is the contraception to individual/business productivity. I’ve been to many meetings where I was invited just to know what we are not going to do afterwards.
The calendar is a great tool and an invention that simulates our intuitiveness; it is good for seeing festival dates, birthdays, and the next day to get promoted or fired. For me, calendars portray an uncertain happening. No number of calendar events can perfectly guarantee the amount or quality of things that are going to take place.
What happens when you plan things in advance, but they never come to fruition for different reasons? The word “reasons” then gets translated into “excuses”, “lethargy”, “bad time management”, or just “it wasn’t the right idea”.
The heart of effective time management was, is, and will be mindfulness of the moment, or what I call the “moment of awakening”. In my understanding, real productivity happens in the “as-is” moment, not in the “as-planned” one. What is the point of scheduling a reserved focus block when you don’t have the energy or the necessary attention required to achieve that task?
People must understand that energy is a finite resource. The most productive people I have seen or worked with are efficient energy managers, and even if their input during meetings is minimal, they do produce quantifiable output. I have seen many of my colleagues claim that they would feel much better spending time on emotional well-being rather than spending time on getting to know what’s not next on the plate.
I do not think the answer is to abandon calendars. Use them for coordination, then leave some room for the day to behave like a day. Plan lightly, act with attention, and judge the work by what actually moved, not by how neatly it sat on the calendar.