We were listening to someone yesterday who has a problem. They said they feel like they’re rushing things. That they’re going about their days doing the things they want to do but just don’t have enough time to do everything they should be doing. While they were talking, I focused on this word ‘rushing’, and think I could give them some good advice, using maths. 

Context

This person does a lot to take care of themselves. They enjoy yoga, breathework, and meditation. They want to try journaling and different kinds of yoga and would probably try many more mindful practices if they had the option. They like cooking, they have close friends and family that they keep in contact with as regularly as possible, and they recently left their full time job of many years. 

Having left their job they imagined they would have time to do all of these things and more. They could spend the morning working on themselves, and the afternoons talking to people, and cooking, and exploring, and, and, and. 

But this didn’t happen. Instead they had the intention to do all of these things, and they started the day with some of them, but then they had to have call with an old friend, and then they had to talk to the lawyer, and then it was time to cook and spend time with friends and all of a sudden there’s no time for anything else. In other words, life got in the way.

Rushing

The way they described it was they felt as if they were rushing through things to get to the next. That they don’t have time to do everything, but they want to do all of these things, so they rush on through. ‘Rushing’ to me implies speed. You’re having to go fast, and this person is saying they’re trying to go too fast, their speed is too high. 

Here comes the maths (don’t worry, it’s just three letters). In basic classical mechanics, speed is a function of distance divided by time. 

In this case let’s say distance is equivalent to the ‘size’ of things you want to do. As if completing a task gets you a little further down your to-do list, or a little further along. And time is just that, how much time you have to complete these things. These are your two variables, the things you can affect to change your speed. 

Currently this person feels like they are rushing, this means their speed is high; let’s say it’s at a five:

Well we only have 24 hours in a day, and let’s assume you get 8 hours of sleep, and lets remove 2 hours for food, then you have 14 hours, or 14 units of time left.

Then we need to ‘quantify’ distance, their tasks. We can do this in terms of time too, but it’s better here to try and do so as a result of complexity, and effort instead. 

For example, an hour of Yoga probably isn’t that complex, but it’s a lot of effort, it takes energy and focus. Let’s say it’s a 3. Calling a loved one is maybe the reverse, it can be complex to listen and to hear them, but it’s not a lot of effort, if it’s a big call, it’s a 3. Reading a book is probably low on both ends (1 or 2), while cooking or answering emails is probably high on both ends (4 or 5). If you want to do this for yourself you can determine your own numbers, this is just an illustration. 

Time is only a feeling

I got into this explanation, without the maths though, and people responded well but then diverged into something along the lines of ‘ah yes, you don’t have enough time to do all of those things.’ But I disagree. Time is less of a problem than what you want to do and so shouldn’t be the focus of what you’re thinking about. 

You have 24 hours in the day. That’s not changing. It’s arbitrary, we’ve made it up, but enough people believe it and hold to it that was can assume its constant. So no, you have the same amount of time as you’ve always had, you’re not running out of time, you’re never running out of time, it’s always the same, instead, you’re trying to do too much. By reframing time as a constant and thinking about what you’re trying to fill that time with, you start thinking about what you’re doing rather than what you can do quickly. 

Planning

With all of this in mind you can start figuring out how to solve ‘rushing’. I recommended they write out all of the things they want to do in one big list. Then, next to it, write a list of the things you got done yesterday when you felt rushed, and underneath that, all of the things you ‘didn’t have the time to do’. 

With these lists you can start to put numbers next to them, to quantify how much effort, or how much distance, they take. Once you have done this you’ll see how much distance you travelled yesterday, vs how much you wanted to travel. 

Now, low and behold, you know how much distance you can move in one day. Great. So tomorrow, only try and do that amount of stuff. Anything else is a bonus. If you find the next day you can’t do as much, that’s okay, adjust your ‘estimates’ and try again. If you find you’ve under estimated and you could have done more, great, find a suitably small or large distance and add it to the plan for the next day. 

That’s it.

Relating to Agile

Someone in the room laughed at my thinking because they were a project manager and knew I was a product manager and called me out for trying to apply a ‘project manager-y’ practice. And he was right, this is very much what the classical scrum (I think) practice is about when you work in sprints. You take the time to understand and plan a set number of things in the time that you have, you leave a little room for surprises, and then you do that, and only that, to achieve some goal for your chosen amount of time.

It might sound silly, but I think there’s so much we can learn from these kinds of practices in our own lives. I don’t necessarily recommend living your life in a series of ‘sprints’, because I haven’t tried it myself, but taking some of the ideas onboard might well help. 

Outro

Yes, it might sounds like a lot, or maybe it seems like ‘work’ just to figure out what you want to do, and its not for everyone, sure, but this person was distressed and feeling overwhelmed and I think this could be a good step in the right direction. Part of being intentional is making decisions in the right direction, but it’s also doing things, trying things, moving forward. If rushing is about speed, intentionality is about velocity. 

- Rhys