Organizing My Time

I’ve been thinking of how to organize how I spend my time better, and I’ve recently decided to carve out my time into 3 separate categories. The three categories, in priority order, are:

1. Creative & Deep Work.
2. Chores.
3. Information Consumption / Reading / Learning.

The goal with carving out time into these 3 categories is to then consciously prioritize them in an appropriate order.

Creative & Deep Work

This would comprise the most deeply satisfying, fulfilling and meaningful type of work. This would include what I would consider “the work of my life” — the contributions I have to make towards the people in this world, the work I feel that God has given, and the adjacent things that enable me to accomplish this.

I’d say this creative & deep work includes:

1. Writing.
2. Programming.
3. Spending time with people — including talking (about edifying things), writing emails to friends, etc.
4. Journaling–as this is a key to self-reflection and self-introspection.
5. Prayer.

All of these are important things, which if left undone, will make life deeply unsatisfying, and eventually make me unhappy deep down.

Chores

This is primarily things that are urgent, but not deeply important. This would include things like cooking, cleaning, laundry, exercising, various small tasks, and the other basic chores of life. These are things which if left undone would simply make life more difficulty, and eventually would get in the way of accomplishing creative & deep work done.

This does need to be prioritized, because if it isn’t, it can literally affect my health and well-being at a basic level.

Information Consumption / Reading / Learning

Some reading & learning actually falls under the first deep work category, if it is directly connected to some project that I’ve committed to working on.

But a lot of my reading (news, Wikipedia, etc) is frivolous reading that is simply a dopamine hit to the brain (at least for people who enjoy learning), and isn’t necessary constructive or directed towards a goal. This sort of information consumption needs to be constrained.

There is an even lower form of information consumption that should be constrained (or even entirely eliminated)–video games, watching TV shows and movies, scrolling through social media sites like Reddit, Facebook, etc. This often is just entertainment.

But I’m at a time of my life where I don’t have room for entertainment. If there is to be any such entertainment, it should be severely time-boxed and limited, so it doesn’t lead to hours of time disappearing into the void.

Feeling Convicted

I consider time to be a gift from God. I’ve felt convicted about how I’ve spent my time, and how poorly it’s been managed. Jesus’ parable of the talents comes to mind here. I need to do better.

Finally, Not Failing Myself

I recently watched a video that paraphrases or summarizes some of the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius (which are collected in the book Meditations). A few things that stood out to me was:

• A wise man fears only abdicating his moral responsibility; he is not afraid of pain, poverty, death, or any other things that life could throw at him; but he fears only that he should let himself down.
• …the duty of a human was to fulfill their potential, and not in getting accolades, or accumulating things … the only true failure in life would be to abdicate this responsibility
• …you should live a life of virtue, you should continue to better yourself, and become all that you possibly can; the only true failure, the only true sadness, the only thing worth fearing is to let yourself down by not achieving your potential [or the tasks and work that God has given you to do on this Earth].

A slight modification I’d make (from a Christian perspective) to the points above is that your potential, your work, your tasks on this Earth, is something that should come from God, in some of revelation (e.g. revealed through the Holy Spirit, but at the very least concordant with scripture, with the teachings in the Bible). There are other things in the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius (and stoicism at large) that are not compatible with Christianity, but I’ll leave a discussion on that for another time.