Being Present and Scheduling

Resets are a good thing

Years ago, I was going through a reset on my life. I needed it. Too little sleep, not enough exercise, and too much work were leading to a bad health situation where my body was about to hand me some divorce papers.

So I did a harder reset. In order to start I sat down and planned out what my schedule would look like tentatively for the next 6 months. I started the schedule by planning in 6 hours of sleep every night.

Not much is still a lot

I realize 6 hours isn’t a lot of sleep, but it’s HUGE when you go from 3 hours every night for roughly a decade. 6 isn’t much, but it’s 100% growth from 3 hours. I gotta be honest, it took a minute for my body to get used to that. I stayed in bed awake for a few hours each night until I finally got used to it.

Secondary and tertiary

Most decisions you make have downline affects. What I didn’t realize is how much scheduling caused those for me. Everything from health all the way to time with my kids. What I began to notice is that I was more present. I found that I wasn’t thinking about the next thing because it was scheduled. All I had to do was arbitrarily follow a calendar. Then when I was in the middle of something like playing with my kids I didn’t have to think about the next thing until time for the next thing. I could just be there with them until it was actually time for the next thing. I wasn’t spending my time with them thinking about what wasn’t happening, because that was all scheduled.

Pre-programming and Cost counting

The idea is that pre-programming your schedule is responsible procrastination so that you can be present with those you need. How do you procrastinate well so that balls are both dropped and picked back up at the right time? How is your process for keeping track impacting your leadership and your presence?