Time intentionality
There are times for me where the days feel like they fly by in a blur. As I get in bed at night I wonder, what did I even do today? Don’t get me wrong, I did a lot– I took care of 5 kids, I clothed, fed, maybe bathed them. I did school work and tried to teach them to be kind and fix their eyes on Christ. But at the same time, so many days it just feels like the day flies by and I didn’t accomplish what I wanted to, or there is still so much to do that it’s a joke to think that I could ever get it all done.
Last night, my oldest wanted me to throw the ball to play 500. When he asked me, he said, “all you have to do is just throw the ball.” Like as if I wouldn’t have time for him, like I wouldn’t want to play with him. This hurt. It hurt, not because he did something wrong, it hurt because I get why he would feel that way. For the last month I have been running at a speed of productivity that is out of control. Every day I’ve woken up with more to do than is possible in the time given. This is partly due to too many deadlines all lining up at the same time, it is an unfortunate timing issue. But it is also due to me not being intentional with my time. I write down all of the productive things on my to do list, but I don’t write “play.”
When I consider whether or not to take on a new project or obligation, I tend to think about its worthiness and whether I’m the right person for the job. I think about whether I’d enjoy doing it and if I’m really needed. Sometimes I will consider whether or not I have time for the project. Sometimes. And even then, if it’s a worthy enough project or need then I just assume that I’ll figure it out. I’ll get up earlier, I’ll keep the kids occupied, I’ll be smarter with my time. I was listening to Sarah MacKenzie’s book, Teaching from Rest, the other day and this statement really struck me:
“If God expected you to get 36 hours worth of work done in a day, he would have given you 36 hours to do it. If you have more to do than time to do it in, the simple fact is this, some of what you are doing isn’t on his agenda for you. . . . we must treat time as the finite resource it is, insist on margin, . . . and ultimately remember that time isn’t ours to begin with.”
Sarah talks about how we have to order our time like a budget. There are only 168 hours in a week, and we must allot those accordingly. When you write a financial budget, you don’t start with all of things you want to do– a trip to Patagonia, a million dollar house, etc . . .. You start with how much money you have to spend and then you allot it to your family’s basic needs first and then to other things. We need to do the same with our time. We have to allot time to sleep, cook, clean, teach and do schoolwork, read, play, and rest. In a given day, I can wake up at 5:30 a.m. and go to sleep at 10:30 p.m.. This means I have 17 hours in a day. I tend to start my day with a list of things to do that far exceeds the 17 hour capacity that I have. This means that I spend most of the day running around, rushing through the things that need to be done, and still coming up short at the end of the day feeling exhausted and burnt out. This is not God’s design, this is not his desire for me.
It is always my goal as we homeschool to show my children the lovely and beautiful things of the world. Great literature, art, music, nature, God. Our American culture seems to get further and further away from these things over time and so we try to bring them back inside our home. I love what Sarah had to say about this in Teaching from Rest:
“The true aim of education is to order a child’s affections – to teach him to love what he ought and hate what he ought. Our greatest task, then, is to put living ideas in front of our children like a feast. We have been charged to cultivate the souls of our children, to nourish them in truth, goodness, and beauty, to raise them up in wisdom and eloquence. It is to those ends that we labor.“
How can I achieve this if I am running around just trying to check everything off the list? How can I order their affections properly and teach them to see beauty if I’m so busy with my own schedule and agenda? I can’t. Instead, I end up creating a harried and frenzied home where we rush through our materials and try to get on to the next thing. When it looks this way, we are not savoring the good and the beautiful.
There are two applications here I believe. The first, is that I need to look at the hours given to me and then plan accordingly. First I need to see the reality of the time I’ve been given and then plot out where to say yes and where to say no. I need to see time as a budget. From this perspective I know that I need to schedule time to play, time to rest, time for margin. These are the things that get thrown out the window when I run out of time. There is no time for throwing a ball in the yard, there is too much to do. I need to schedule this time in my day. It is just as important as weeding the flower bed, even more so actually.
The second application is that I need to stick to blocks of time. I tend to write a list and then just go through that list whenever I have a spare second. This means that I never really feel like I’m done. I’ve never accomplished what I set out to do. So while lists are a good tool, and I still have one, I’m trying to take my list and fit it into a block schedule. This is what it looks like for today.
Early morning — blog writing, Austin working, big kids finishing up schoolwork
Late morning — an appointment and store trip
Early afternoon — yard work and building a playset perimeter
Late afternoon — naps, rest, reading, and volleyball or kickball with the big kids
Evening — dinner, any remaining schoolwork, our family book, showers and bed
Late evening — drafting RISE curriculum while Austin catches up on some work
The thing about the block system is that I have to accept that some things might not get finished. Like this article, what if I can’t complete it this morning? Then perhaps, it won’t get posted today. I’m going to need to accept the limitations of my time. As I improve at ordering my time, perhaps next week I’ll get it done early and I won’t be pushing it into the morning it is “due.” But for now, I need to accept that I just only have so much time today. So, you may see a typo in this article, or some incorrect grammar. You may think that it isn’t as well written as some of my others. That’s because I have hungry children in the next room. My time to write is up and I need to go get some breakfast ready for 5 tiny humans and get the big ones going on their schoolwork. Already today I have missed one thing on my to do list– my run. I woke up late and so this one thing needs to be sacrificed to achieve the others. It’s simply the reality of the time I was given today. Could I shove it in somewhere else, sure. But then I would be saying no to something else that I blocked out time for today. I would be saying no to something else good and beautiful. These choices are hard. I just want to multiple my time and do it all. But alas, this is impossible. So I go now, to make the breakfast, to learn about the Greeks, to practice our phonograms. I go to try to show the beautiful and the lovely, not the harried and frenzied.
