Lately, I’ve been feeling a little stressed, so I go back to the measurement of my time and see what the problem is? – my calendar.
And even with the boundaries I established at the beginning of the year, they weren’t specific enough to really help release me from my demon of overcommitment.
I’ve been away from home (give or take) 31 days this year.
That’s a MONTH.
Using some other tools to analyze my time, I realize I spend an average of 2-3 hours a day on social networking sites (checking Twitter, Facebook, whatever).
That would be almost 40 days SOLID in a YEAR!
And I wonder where my time goes.
The stress comes when the things I value in my heart (mainly my faith) are not getting the time and attention they deserve. There’s a misalignment of values. What I say is important and where I spend my time don’t line up to a degree where it’s healthy.
It’s not that I don’t see spending time online, interacting, praying, caring, sharing, and learning with people as valuable. But when it trumps the things MOST valuable to my heart (faith) is where it gets sticky.
Yesterday at lunch I sat down with my calendar and my thoughts. I had to cancel two speaking engagements, not because they aren’t valuable or important, but because ultimately (due to a variety of circumstances) went away from – and not toward – making my faith stronger. Being gone at these specific times would have impacted those things negatively, thus causing unhealthy stress.
We also talked about my time online, and decided because I NEED STRUCTURE, I will be sticking to the following “boundaries” until the beginning of September, when we’ll evaluate and adjust if necessary. I’m not saying YOU should do this. I’m just putting in writing what is best for my faith and myself right now.
Twitter. Currently, I probably check it 50 times a day. Lord knows how many times I actually tweet. New boundary? I’ll check and update only three times a day – once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening. NO notifications, except direct messages, ping me elsewhere.
Facebook. I’m not on it much anyway, but I’ll only log in to Facebook once a week. NO notifications at ALL ping me elsewhere.
Online Sabbath. Once a week (it’s looking like Saturday) I will be completely unplugged. I will not be checking email, Twitter, Facebook, whatever. If my computer is on, the only thing open is Word so I can work on writing. One day a week, completely computer free.
Stat-Ho. I am only going to check my blog stats, Technorati (as if that means much anymore) and Feedburner stats once a month. I can get obsessed by these numbers and sometimes measuring things too much is a bad idea. At least for me.
So…there you have it. A few new rules in the life of Anne Jackson. I think margin is so important and will talk until I’m blue in the face about it, but if I’m not living that life myself, well, I’m just a big fat liar.
Is there anywhere you need to build in margin? What steps can you take to do it? Sometimes it just takes DOING it.
I had the good intent of getting this post up about five hours ago, but you know what? I had a mess of random things come up in my schedule and I’ve literally spent most of my day away from my computer.