Tightening timelines

Foals start walking within two hours of birth. Humans aren’t ready quite as quickly. (Image by CANDICE CANDICE)

When it comes to gardening, I’ve often had good intentions but failed at execution.

The tray of pansies stays on the porch until it’s too hot to plant them. The flowering vines that were supposed to decorate the back deck instead eat it alive (this kind of thing can easily happen in Georgia).

It’s the same old thing many of us face: We start with enthusiasm but not much of a plan, and then get distracted.

There are plenty of reasons/excuses, like lack of time or being too busy. Being at home day after day with empty evenings and weekends has taught me that it’s more a problem of focus than time. That is why my home, which I’ve been living in for eight months, has only two pieces of art on the wall. The others rest on the floor, patiently waiting for hanging hardware that, at this rate, may take as long as herd immunity to arrive. I’ve had plenty of time. But any project that I haven’t made a priority is a project that won’t get done.

The great thing is that, by understanding my problem as lack of focus rather than a lack of time, I can use my focus systematically in order to break the pattern of starting things and not following through sufficiently. Therefore, on the evenings and weekends, I’m channeling that focus into the garden so that none of the seeds and seedlings I’ve purchased, or the giant pile of soil that was recently delivered by a dump truck, will go to waste this time.

It’s a lot of work and it does take a lot of planning. Much of that work is an investment that will pay off later, not only in future vegetables this season, but in future seasons that will be made easier by the effort I’m putting in now. However, if I miss this window for preparation and planting, there will be no vegetables this year.

I’ve observed that my clients are most successful when they allow themselves to channel all of their focus into a given project, at least for the time required for that project. That doesn’t mean that the project has to take over their whole life. No, they simply make a plan and stick to it, giving their entire attention to the work when the corresponding time block shows up on the calendar. In this way, something that they’d imagined was going to take years to develop took months or weeks instead, or a scary piece of creative work might be completed in a single weekend. Ironically, when we find the time to do something, it ends up taking a lot less time than we thought.

For those who are able to play with their time and focus this way in order to complete top-priority projects, it can be frustrating to try to collaborate with those who haven’t figured this out. An email is sent and lingers ten days without a reply when, theoretically, the entire project could have been done by then. It’s a bit of a mismatch when you’re thinking in weeks and the other person is imagining months.

I’m not playing the holier-than-thou role here—I’ve always been more likely to be the person who thinks in terms of years. This has allowed me to keep approximately 4,502 projects on the back burner. This, in turn, saves me from the pain of having to be brutally realistic about which ones I will actually accomplish. It’s a way of hiding. With such liberal timelines, I never have to make painful choices or face reality. There’s always someday.

By contrast, if I tighten the timeline of a given project, it stands a chance of actually happening. Three years becomes sixteen hours, doled out over the course of a two weeks. Done.

Of course, those sixteen hours have to come from somewhere. The time that I spend on this project is time that I can’t spend on another. And what might emerge as a result of this reckoning is clarity about what I’m actually willing to spend my time on. My time and focus are finite resources that will sometimes require me to say a clear “no” instead of adding more stuff to the “someday” list.

As difficult as it is to let go of projects and partnerships that are not right for right now, the result is a schedule and a life that is aligned with what I want most. When I’m honest with myself about what I can do, I can be more strategic about actually getting it done. Recognizing my limitations allows me to see my capabilities more clearly and accomplish what is most important to me. How about you?