Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is time.

We know that we have been given the gift of time. It comes with strings attached: social distancing, sheltering-in-place, financial insecurity, calamitous concern about humans worldwide, distractions galore. If you ever wished for a sabbatical or extended snow days, I’m confident these are not the terms you would have asked for. Yet here we are.

I’ve been thinking about the personal expression attached to how we structure time. Our schedules and routines not only define us, but they can also be our anchors, our beacons, our stretch goals, our form of measurement, our currency. Eugene Wei recently wrote, “without a weekly routine, it’s difficult to even remember what day of the week it is, illustrating just how much of our awareness of the passage of time is encoded in ritual.” (source)

I’m a producer/PM by profession, so maybe this line of thinking is more indicative of the work I do and the way I problem-solve. I came to project management organically—a perfect storm of soft skills and technical proclivities (my love of spreadsheets, lists, and calendars definitely a factor). I embraced a methodology of controlling whatever can be controlled, removing unknowns and ambiguity, and moving towards certainty whenever possible. I love an agenda. I love planning. The trade-off is I’m kind of rigid.

I thought this was only an affectation of adulthood + capitalism, but evidence from my childhood proves differently:

Please note: on Mondays we make puppets.

I’ve come to learn that the impulse to have a highly-structured routine likely evolved as a coping mechanism to living with ADHD and anxiety; knowing exactly what to expect for days/weeks/months is of great comfort to these disorders. For me, reviewing calendars, agendas, and lists is soothing: I get a sweet dopamine spike just crossing a task off a to-do list, whether on paper or digitally. On good days, this works pretty well, though I still have to trick my brain into focusing on the right things, sometimes.

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Since the pandemic and social distancing began for us in the states, “structure” and “routine” have been a challenge. Internally, the monsters are loud. Externally, there’s a thousand more monsters. For me, time seems to be moving at a rapid pace but somehow also painfully slow. I keep feeling pangs of boredom, restlessness, decision fatigue, and the cursed paradox of choice. Being creative feels untenable without a magic spell or a glass of wine. I’m more fragmented and distracted than ever, but also technically less busy? Idle hands, so the saying goes? S.O.S.

In the past I’ve learned that a routine and task-based agendas serve me well when I’m under intense timelines, or working on something big (e.g., like finishing my Tarot project a couple years ago). It stands to reason that a routine would also provide comfort and satisfaction in unknowing times. For funsies, I’m going to experiment with different agendas and routines these coming weeks. It’s not so much that I want to “keep busy” or be productive: it’s that I want that gravity blanket of structured time to sing me home and tuck me in.

I thought I’d share some of my favorite ways/tools to plan for projects, routines, and deep work, including a couple I’ve come up with and evolved over time.

Approaches for Daily/Weekly Agendas

At this point in my life, scheduling daily/weekly agendas is about the only way for me to guarantee shit will get done. My BFFs in this category are: on-paper weekly planners (with daily agendas), Google Calendar, estimations for length/duration of tasks, and time boxing.

In an ideal scenario, every Sunday/Monday before kicking off a new week I commit to what I’m hoping to accomplish for the week, and assign actual day/time values to everything from firm deadlines (freelance assignments, bills, etc.) to the most amorphous items (e.g., 2x/week I have blocked out time for writing time, 3x/week for thinking/walking time). I set a few deadlines based on bigger picture (monthly) goals, as well. I’ve been enjoying doing this step on paper, then migrating some of the essentials (basically, due dates) to my Google Calendar. When I add a task as an all-day item to my Google Calendar, it’s meant to be a kind of reminder (read: do this today), so I usually delete it once complete (e.g., dye hair, pick up Rx), whereas recurring events or things like phone dates become an artifact. tl;dr: the paper weekly planner is more like my agenda whereas my digital calendar is my schedule.

I’m obsessed with templates for agendas and to-do lists and various task and time management tools. Some of my favorites are task-based, whereas others are schedule (read: time)-based; a few even combine both (tasks on a schedule). A few examples:

• Amber Rae’s “Work, Play, Fit, Push” framework. I really love this one, though I find it challenging to force something under each category (e.g., writing “walk/bike” 5x under “Fit” felt, like, not the point). I also realized that I’m kinda lazy and don’t want to “Push” on a daily/weekly basis unless I have to (deadline!) or say so myself (rare creative motivation!).

• High/Low Impact High/Low Effort Matrix (there are many variations of this one). I have used this on work projects with some success. For personal use, you’ve gotta be cool with thinking about the tasks you want to accomplish as having “Impact,” which is kind of a lot.

• Kanban. Folks in tech likely know alllllll about this, but if you’ve never heard of it, it’s the notion of prioritizing and being real about how many tasks can truly be in progress at once. I love the simplicity of a to-do list being identified, put into a queue, and moving through “Doing” and “Done” stages individually or in bundles.

• Gamify It. Oh, boy, I found many different examples for personal to-do lists and collaborative projects (including household/domestic lists). I’m not really a game person, so for me, the stakes are only high when they’re real (deadlines, deep flow, creating something), but I know making things seem light or fun or competitive might work for others.

• Plug n’ Play Agenda. I started using to address that weird laundry list of things that had no particular deadlines or urgency driving them. I evolved this one to…

• Timebox Tasks Agenda. Same idea as above, except being real about how much time it would take to do (and ideally, complete) a given task. I found it works well (for me) to trigger that dopamine buzz of scratching many small items off the list but also committing to time-boxing exactly when tasks were getting done. My preference here is days broken into AM/PM; I prefer whenever possible to not live my life strictly, as in, “3pm, do yard work, 4:10pm, crack open a cold one.” That said, sometimes I need the time box to be inflexible so I won’t procrastinate.

• Pomodoro Technique. Tomatoes! Well, ultimately this is one way to look at time boxing, using intervals of time in 25-minute increments, and 5-minute breathers to come up from air. If you get into deep work, you can string pomodoros together for longer sessions. This works best with a physical timer, though there’s a dozen apps that use this methodology. (I recently tried out Forest and like the idea of “planting a tree” when you want focus-time, which blocks out other apps while you concentrate.)

Perseverance During Tough Times

Another gem from Eugene Wei’s newsletter:

“It’s also been a stark reminder of how much routines mark out the days of the week in my head, how it’s easy now to lose sense of what day it is when your calendar is just a never-ending series of Zoom meetings, most of which could be moved around with little urgency. …Sometimes our bodies in motion are the closest thing to a clock. If you usually go for a run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, then halting that routine removes one of your physical clocks. If you aren’t sitting at your desk at work, you’re missing one of the most obvious cues that it’s a weekday. If, instead, you’re at home 7 days a week with your kids, everything blends into a temporal run-on sentence.”

Time dilation is a trip. Building a routine makes things feel normal in unprecedented times. For me, this includes things I’m committing myself to doing on a daily or weekly cadence, and some things I want to do more of.

Daily/Weekly Guidelines—Things I’m Doing:

• Move every single day (exercise also guarantees, uh, that I’ll take a shower, which is also really, really important) - no exceptions. I’ve been going for walks and bike rides frequently.

• Meal/snack/beverage/meds planning. I’m kinda nutso about this, but it’s for my own sanity. Meals planned the day before (who’s eating which leftovers, when to thaw something from the freezer, etc.), regimented supplements/meds, snacks, and beverages. I take meds twice a day; eat 3 meals a day; won’t let myself drink alcohol before 4pm; coffee window is 1pm-5pm; etc.

• Changing outfits based on what I’m doing. I’ve learned that putting on shoes or jewelry can be a game-changer for my brain, because I associate both things with leaving the house. Video calls with friends? This actually keeps me from wearing the same shirt days in a row—Marco Polo Accountability Club. I’m overdue for a day of wearing make-up, maybe I’ll even crimp my hair or wear a wig one of these days?

• Rely on Digital Wellbeing tools for screen time, app timers, etc. For me the big one is limiting time on the bird hellsite, reading pandemic commentary, and every breaking-news article. (Best advice: “trust no one, cross reference, fact check, and proceed with caution” source). I’ve set timers to boot me out of apps that I have a fucked up relationship with, and it keeps me honest.

Stretch Goals—Things I Want To Do More Of:

• Rituals & Traditions. I was a terrible Wiccan those 6 months in college; it was the obligatory rituals that did me in. I’m not consistent about rituals and traditions in general, but I want to start building some ceremony into the everyday and commonplace, especially because uh, we’re all gonna be homebound for a while longer. Here’s the thing: my home is full of magic! Yours probably is too! Some things I want to do more of: light more candles, set the table for dinner, make memories, create variations on a theme, send more snail mail, have more date nights, keep up with movie nights, and so on. There’s something really special about making the most of your situation wherever possible. It can be simple—I think a lot about the Louisiana tradition I grew up with of eating red beans and rice on Mondays. (I mean, what if we really lean into Taco Tuesdays? No wrong answers here.)

• Channeling curiosity into existing objects. I’m a maximalist and I really like my things. In the past week I’ve had a renewed interest in looking through photo albums, art books, random notes, letters, doodles, etc. In fact, looking through old notebooks was what made me think to write this newsletter—I found several examples of milestone calendars I worked out for production events, and some other Get Shit Done time boxing lists. Some other things I’m hoping to do in coming weeks: research the spices and sauces we bought traveling but haven’t used yet, make art or crafts with new-to-me supplies I’m hoarding, try new cocktail recipes from books and menus I’ve collected, maybe make some collages, plant more seeds in the garden, and so on.

Other People’s Routines

Everyones’ brain works so differently; I think that’s very cool, and fascinating. I want to hear about your routines and how you are structuring your time.

Do you keep a paper planner? Do you have recurring alarms or calendar events for tasks or reminders (& do they work for you)? What is your daily routine like? How do you approach your to-do list? What are your rituals and traditions? How are things different for you these days?

Share a glimpse with me by replying via email or Substack comment. If I get enough replies, maybe I’ll send out a Pt. 2 newsletter with what I learn.

exes and ohhs,

rhienna

P.S. I’ve spent a lot of my life as a long-distance penpal, but I sure do miss y’all. If the feeling is mutual, you can drop a video or phone date on my calendar by picking a time that works for you here using Calendly. :)