In defense of having a schedule
The choices that you and I have about how to spend our days are beyond the imagining of those who lived just a few generations ago. (The Library of Congress)
A lot of creative people resist the idea of a schedule.
They prefer to be in the flow, following their ideas and impulses wherever they go.
A schedule feels too constricting, and maybe too much like school or like work.
True, the potential of a totally unscheduled day feels magical. But the truth is, we don’t always make the magic happen. Sometimes, we drift around, unable to find a path in the sea of possibilities.
For some of us, it’s better to have a set of intentions to hang onto.
And that’s what a schedule is, ultimately. It doesn’t have to be restrictive. It’s really just an agreement with our future self regarding what we’re going to do and when.
However, if that notion is intolerable, we can at least just have a plan. We don’t have to say when we’re going to do the things — we can just decide in advance what we’re going to do.
And then we can do those things in any order, working around the obligations that have fixed times, like appointments and meetings.
That tends to be how I operate. I figure that I can do any of my tasks in any order during the whitespace between fixed appointments on my calendar.
All I have to do is plan ahead to make sure that space will fit all of the tasks I have and the amount of time it will take to do them.
Doing that planning work in advance is much better than doing it on the fly. When you’ve already made the decisions about what is important to you to get done that day and figured how long it’s going to take, then you don’t have to spend a lot of time and energy in between tasks trying to work through that.
Whenever you finish something, you just pick from the list and get going on the next thing. Your prime time will be spent as effectively as possible.
And if you’re feeling particularly inspired, you can ditch the plan and go wherever you want with your creativity. But the plan is there in case you need it. It wasn’t a waste of time even if you chose not to follow it.
On the other hand, if there’s something on your list that keeps getting bumped from today to tomorrow to the next, it might be time for an actual schedule. You can put that item directly on your calendar. It becomes a commitment to yourself that sits right alongside your commitments to other people.
The truth is, a lot of us need structure a lot more than we think we do. Some of us who yell the loudest about not wanting structure or routine actually would benefit from it a great deal. It’s just that we need to find a structure that works for us. That doesn’t have to be shaped like the bell schedule from our middle school. It can be something that is customized to the way we already tend to work, that anticipates the work sessions and breaks that are likely to be necessary for us.
If the idea of a schedule feels too oppressive, we can ease the way with a plan. And if the plan feels too overwhelming, we can tinker with it until it’s just right. From there, we can continue to make changes and adjustments so that we get out of the day what we want to, the way we want to.
Being our own boss gives us plenty of freedom. We can get used to using that freedom to gently direct ourselves, bringing our days into greater harmony with what we truly want.
