making time

[cellio]

Assertion: if something is important enough to you, you'll make time for it. So if you don't have time, it's probably just not important enough to you. (It doesn't matter whether "it" is a hobby, a political cause, reading the daily newspaper, watching a certain TV show, or whatever.)

An objection I saw raised to this (in a protected entry) was, basically, that people are busy, so being too busy doesn't mean the thing isn't important. But that misses the point, I think.

Yes, of course people are busy. I'm certainly very busy, at least. But my not having time for a given activity does not pass a value judgement on the activity -- just on that activity for me at this time.

Maybe I'm weird, but when I consider taking on something new, I ask myself where the time will come from. It has to come from somewhere, after all, and those college-age days of just saying "I'll sleep less" are long past. Certain time commitments are non-negotiable: job, family time, sleep, religious commitments. (That's not an ordered list.) All else is optional. (Of course commitments once made must be kept absent permission to break them. I'm not talking about that; I'm talking about the initial decision to take on the activity/commitment.)

When my music group (On the Mark) started, I realized that for me the time would come from the informal instrumental group I was playing with. When I became generally more active on the net, that time came from casual reading (particularly science fiction). When I started using LiveJournal, I dropped some mailing lists and put the final nail in the Usenet coffin. When I began to spend more time on religion, that time came from SCA involvement. (Within the "SCA" box there has also been an ebb and flow -- fighting gave way to choir, dancing to brewing (and music), archery to scribal time, scribal time to dance research (and persona research), and so on.) When I recently became chair of a synagogue committee, I planned for an easy initial chunk of time until my board term ends in May. And, yeah, there was one season of Babylon 5 for which the answer was "sleeping less one night a week isn't so bad".

The point is: to do things you have to give up other things. Sometimes there's nothing you are ready to give up, and that's a sign that you shouldn't be taking on that new thing right now. (Again thinking about the SCA, sometimes college freshmen fail to anticipate the competing time demands of SCA activities and classes. Classes have to come first.) Sometimes there are things you could give up but the new activity just isn't important enough for you to do so -- maybe your weekly commitment to fighting practice is more important than a new gaming group. So you don't "have time" for the gaming group, but if your situation were different you would have time for gaming and no longer have time for fighting.

There are only so many hours in the day. When something new comes along, I ask myself: is there anything I'm doing, and that I'm not committed to, that is less interesting than this new thing? If so, I consider a swap. If not, then I don't have time for the new thing right now, though I might have a year ago or might a year from now.

Comments

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

I think sometimes (in my case) the problem may come from not accurately evaluating the time committment required. For example, in a normal week...I can probably sail through no problem...but what is a normal week?

What about "busy times" for a particular activity. In the religious setting, what about holiday times? In the musical setting, what about the leadup to a concert? In a church music setting, what about the leadup to the holidays? And when in more than one of the above, what happens when everything hits at once?

Example (i think I've mentioned this previously in my journal) will be the weekend of Nov. 29-30 for me. In those two days, I will have: one dress rehearsal to play for, two concerts of Handel's Messiah to sing in, about 6 hours on a bus (3 hours there, 3 hours back), a church service, and a Christmas concert.

But the concerts are infrequent enough that I basically tend to consider only the rehearsals when deciding if it fits into my schedule.

The other problem may be not realising my limitations...how much activity is too much on a normal basis?

[cellio]

Good points. Sometimes we can't tell until we're in, and then we have to adjust. We'd have to do the same thing if something non-optional came up and pushed the "optional" activities.

Crunches happen to everyone and when they overlap it's even worse, and most of the time all you can do is ride them out. When crunches become the norm rather than the exception, though, it's time to re-evaluate. (I don't think that's your situation; you know it's going to happen and you've probably adjusted your other commitments near that time to compensate.)

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

Yes, I put off the handbell choir until January, because I knew November/December would be crazy. I think I was just off on a tangent...for me, the problem isn't living up to my committments, I'm more likely to drive myself into the ground than disappoint somebody else. A case of a good thing taken too far.

I don't know...I"m not thinking clearly about myself today. (Either that or I'm thinking way too clearly...either way, I'm not thinking normally.)