How to create more time
Long ago, when I thought about what the month before my manuscript deadline would be like, I hoped for a peaceful stroll toward the finish line, full of editing and polishing and not very much writing. I feared—and somewhat expected—a mad scramble of vomiting up just enough last-minute words to fulfill my contract. Due to Circumstances, I ended up with more of a mad scramble than I would have liked. Many of the ~90,000 words I turned in didn’t exist even 30 days before the deadline. I dropped almost every other responsibility and interest to work to my maximum capacity, every day, and to avoid siphoning precious subconscious processing time away from the book. I called upon all the college-final, breaking-news muscles I’ve developed and directed their power at my manuscript. I met the impossible deadline, as I had so many times before.
What shocked me to my core, however, was that this time, I didn’t feel destroyed by the effort. I wasn’t exhausted or drained at the end of it. I didn’t hate what I was turning in. I didn’t hate myself for needing the last-minute push. I didn’t collapse when it was over. I could have kept going. Honestly, I kind of wanted to.
Unlike previous iterations of the mad scramble experience, this one didn’t involve any all-nighters, or ever being up past my bedtime. It didn’t involve sacrificing exercise, nourishing food, or going outside. It didn’t even involve restricting my internet time or ruthlessly sticking to a predetermined schedule. I let myself do what I wanted to do, with the understanding that what I most wanted to do during that month was write. I trusted the small distractions wouldn’t meaningfully interfere with my commitment and the big ones would still be there once I was done.
As a result, it didn’t feel like I was giving the manuscript everything I had until there was nothing of me left. It felt like I was turning toward it, fully and consciously. My time, my energy, and my self didn’t shrink and wither under the pressure of the deadline and everything I hadn’t done yet. They expanded to meet the work I wanted to do. They expanded because I was doing it.
I’m glad I experienced this before I read this post by Mandy Brown1, because otherwise I never would have believed her:
Here’s a concrete example, and perhaps a familiar one: someone is so busy with work and caretaking that they don’t make time for their art. At the end of the day they’re too tired to write or paint or make music or whathaveyou. So they don’t. Days, then weeks go by. They are more and more tired. They are getting less and less done. They take a mental health day and catch up on sleep but the exhaustion persists. Their overwhelm grows larger, becomes intolerable. The usual tactics don’t work. The catapult trundles closer.
Then one day they say fuck it all. They eat leftover pasta over the sink, drop mom off at her mahjongg game, and go sit in the park to draw. They draw for hours, until the sun goes down and they’re squinting under the street lights. And, lo and behold, the next day they plow through all those lingering to-dos. They see clearly that half of them were unnecessary when before they all seemed critical. They recognize a few others as things better handed off to their peers. They suddenly find time for attending to that one project they’d been procrastinating on for weeks. They sleep better. Their skin looks great. (Okay I might be exaggerating on that last one, but only mildly.)
It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.
This will not be the case with every deadline, or every kind of work, or every season of life. It would not have been the case for me and my manuscript without thyroid medication restoring me to a minimum standard of health and functioning. But it is the case sometimes, and probably more often than we let ourselves think. Next time I have a big project (which is now, as I embark on book edits), I don’t want to think about the minutes counting down. I want to think about them filling up.
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Previously appreciated in this newsletter for her galvanzing distinction between “burning out” and “burning up.”