add an “s” and it’s deadliness.

I’ve learned or been reminded about some things about time in the process of both writing every day in December and doing my best to post something I’ve written publicly every day. The first thing is that there really is time if you make that time happen. You can write every day. The second is that sometimes there really isn’t time, in the sense that you can make space for writing but on some days nothing worth sharing gets produced and on others days time is limited and you have to make choices about how to spend it. Some days it might be smarter to spend it with your nephew or the food you need to cook or at the gym.

But having the self-imposed demand there in the background helps as a reminder or an impetus to take the time to work out some thoughts. Most of what I’ve written this month consists of things I wouldn’t have taken the time to work out into arguments or coherent thought-trains if I hadn’t given myself this challenge. The fact that some days I come up with interesting things that I’m happy to share and hear back about from other people is just as important as the reminder that on some days I just can’t produce something in that category. I can write every day. But that writing may not be ready for anyone else to read. It may not even be ready for me to understand. So the practice functions as a visceral reminder of the time it takes to think.

This is related, I think, to what Evany wrote yesterday about our compulsive relation to smart phones and social media, the checking and rechecking and checking again of the status updates and likes and shares and so forth. We neglect to leave space for silence or pause or nothing to happen. But silence and pause and nothing-doing tends to be when the best ideas arrive: ideas arrive where you leave space for them. This constant filling-up-of-time is probably at least partly why so many of us feel so overwhelmed and stressed, like there is never any down time, so much of the time, even when we may not be doing much of anything. (This “not much of anything” can be actually not much, like sitting on the couch for hours checking phone and facebook and twitter and instagram. Or it can be the work that has to get done but feels like nothing, like answering So Many Emails about work-related things, some of which could have been left unsent and unanswered if we all decided to live differently — but this is how we work now.) I wrote about this in a different mode the other day when I talked about time and social media. I do sometimes give myself rules like “no screens after 8pm” or “only look at facebook over breakfast and briefly after dinner” — and those rules do tend to have positive effects on my feelings of well-being or my capacity to sleep well. But it is easy to fall off the wagon of self-imposed rules. We’ve probably all been that person who grabs the phone to check it during every moment between moments. We probably all would be better off if we stopped doing that. It might make us better writers, better friends, and happier people.

But it won’t solve every problem. I gave myself lots of time yesterday. I struggled for quite a while to do some writing and not much came of it. It was like this.

Yesterday I gave up. Today when I sat on the couch and felt like the demand to produce something was going to kill me I just shut down the computer, turned the phone over, picked up an actual book, and settled into the couch for some reading time. Nothing clears the mind of stress like focusing on someone else’s words (for me), even if those words are difficult and work-related. For me this works as a form of meditation (of sorts), but only if it’s an actual book or printed-out article, or possibly a kindle screen, but not any other kind of a screen. 95% of the time, screens don’t relax me, clear my mind, or open up the possibility of unplanned thoughts. Sometimes when I’m engaged in a day of writing, sitting in front of my computer, surprising new things will happen and I’ll produce some good ideas, some of them even well-phrased. But if I’m going to be honest, most of the smartest work I do I do when I am not trying to force it and I’m not looking at a screen.

Don’t get me wrong. I still do have to force it. I have to commit to sitting down and doing the writing. I have to set up a schedule where this happens every day or at least fairly often, and I have to be strict about not checking facebook or email or letting the fact that the laundry needs done or that letters of recommendation need to be written, etc., get in the way. You have to be willing to leave some other things unattended so that you can get your own work done. You have to have the conviction that that matters. And you have to do the forcing because that is part of how the time appears in which you can do the work.

But even that forcing doesn’t get all the work done. Because, as I keep saying (in so many different ways and places, for instance, the opening lines of the acknowledgements section of my book and my post from December 16), ideas don’t come when you’re ready, they come when they are (it’s Nietzsche’s idea). That’s why deadlines can be so terrifying (add an “s” and it’s deadliness). Because you aren’t fully in control of how the writing will go even when you’re disciplined about it, the writing won’t always be what you want it to be when you want it to be that thing.

A deadline has a double function, for me. It can be the stern taskmaster and reminder of time’s inexorability, making me do what I might otherwise put off doing. We like to think there is plenty of time but there is not! This is not only true about writing. A deadline (or a plan or a date or a promise) can make that truth more real to those of us who like to ignore it. But a deadline can also be that implacable demand for a conclusion before time has granted one worthy of the writing. And then you have to decide which kind of time matters more: on time or enough time.