To save precious time, I want to be clear: this is not a 'how to'. I'm not offering tips. You won't learn any productivity 'hacks' ("yoga smarter, not harder"). This post is not about stockpiling time (can it even be done?), but saving it: rescuing, protecting, reclaiming, savouring even. How? By doing less; much, much, less. Or the merit of trying to do less, anyway. If you find this prospect unappealing at best, terrifying at worst, consider this my letter to you. It's taken a whole year for me to write (or, thirty-two to be exact) and it remains unfinished:
Towards the end of last year, I found myself on the brink of exhaustion for the third time in less than ten years. Albeit precipitated by significant life events one has little control over, for me, it was enough to recognise a pattern and it is a pattern I would like to break; need to break actually. It really feels that imperative.
I do not consider myself a greedy person. I live simply and I'd like to flatter myself (of course I would) as someone who is largely successful in cultivating a non-grasping attitude, bar one distinct area of my life, which just so happens to be the biggest, most all encompassing one: how I spend my time. I am greedy with time. I always want more of it. My ideal day would be a week long. I'm not satisfied with my day, my week, my year (which is to say, my life) unless I have ticked off the unrealistic amount of things I have given myself to do, which - being unrealistic - means I am rarely satisfied. While not very clever, this is an excellent emotional avoidance strategy: credit where credit is due.
I have a talent for making the things I do for enjoyment into work. The nooks I had once carved out for simply 'being', became rigid, inescapable structures permeated by 'doing'. Writing and reading became both study and career. Yoga became teaching. Cycling became coaching, volunteering, campaigning. Home space became work place. In many respects, this is wonderful; I feel lucky to earn a living and spend vast amounts of my time doing and thinking about things I care very deeply about, but it wouldn't be honest of me to hide the encroaching wave of tiredness this brings with it. I think it is possible to identify so much with what we 'do' that we lose sight of ourselves in the process. For me, this has certainly been the case.
“You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.”
At some indefinable point - too early on in life - I confused who I was with what I did; my self-worth for what I produced. It started at school, was cemented at university and has carried me through the first part of my adult life (for better and worse). It's not surprising to me that the yoga practice I committed to was one that provided very little space for rest and reflection; a physically packed 2 hours a day, 6 days a week. Not that I always succeeded in doing this, mind you, but I definitely thought that I should. That the world will stop if you stop, is a self-aggrandising illusion of magnificent proportions, but it’s an illusion that can help keep us sane for a while.
The motivation to do more, was the guilt I felt for not doing enough, or - more precisely - the shame I felt for not being enough: There is so much to do. There is so much that needs to be done. I must do more. I must do more, better. I must be better. I became so good at doing that when I started to feel like I was stuck on a treadmill, no longer wanting (or, needing) the exercise, I couldn’t remember how to step off.
So, I keep doing (it's my default now), but I start increasingly daydreaming about not doing. I have an urge to sit. I notice that - depending on my frame of mind - doing nothing can feel both nourishing and panic inducing. Who am I when I’m not doing? I’m not entirely sure, but - slowly, surely - I would like to find out. I'm done being tired.
Last Christmas, I printed out my calendar and spent my holiday scheduling some dedicated 'free' time. Is there anything more neurotic, or necessary? I failed to keep much of that space, of course, but I'll keep trying. Down-training a nervous system - paradoxically - takes effort.
For now, I know that I need to save time to rest, to let my thoughts wander, to consider, to imagine, to troubleshoot, to question. Time without deadlines, or the promise of an end-result; time where my inbox remains unanswered and the (perennially) full laundry basket needs seeing to. I need time to write, to not-write, to edit, re-write, delete, write the same thing all over again, but with a greater understanding the second time around. Greater understanding is my hope, at least.