Time is on My Side: How Journaling Can Help You Claim Back Your Time
I was listening to a New Year message yesterday by Neil DeGrasse Tyson on TikTok. He was saying all humans on earth celebrate a moment in time that has no astrological relevance at all. It's completely made up. Some people would think of that as a bit of a downer. We love the joy and build-up of the New Year and expect the hard switch from the life we had to the life we hope for this year. Never has this been more needed than this past New Year. We had muted celebrations due to COVID. Yet, we needed this break to leave the disaster of 2020 behind and look forward to a brighter year in 2021.
But, this is a made-up point of time and that also gives us a reason to celebrate. This means that we don't have to wait until New Year, or Monday or the 1st of the month to start our new and positive life. We can create meaningful moments and a positive surge forward at any time.
That is an amazing thought! It is a desire that comes through in the pages of our journals. We track and plan and chronicle our progress, aspirations, and dreams. We create and plot and seek throughout the pages of our journals. We block time and book points in our days and weeks to achieve tasks. We are trying to find the right time, the best plan, and the most suitable structure for ourselves. We try out what other people have done in their journals. In the end, our most successful pages are the ones we finally discover that work in tune with our own cycles.
An example of this is weekly spreads, which many people who bullet journal use. They don't work well for me. The weekly planner creates a sense of constant panic in me. In my mind, I've achieved nothing at all within that time. I have tasks that I roll over to the next day/week. This serves to reinforce how little I get done, and the stress of it demotivates me and makes me freeze up mentally. So, I ditched the weekly planner. I have a monthly spread for appointments and such and a daily framework.
This will not work for a lot of people. This is an example of how I've had to use my journal to get in touch with my own sense of time and measures of success.
What if we tried to get more in tune with our own cycles? How would this affect us? Do you work the standard work hours? What if your productive hours are 4 am - 1 pm and not 9 am - 5 pm? I bet that over 2020 some of you, like me, found this to be the case. Some of us are night owls: getting a huge surge of energy in the evening when it's quiet and you can focus. What about exercise and eating habits? Does it not make sense to listen to your body and not do things because time dictates? What about bad habits? How many of us have noticed that they are often connected to time? Time of day for a drink? Time of day for a smoke break? When you disrupt those cycles, you start breaking down the habit.
Instead of implementing trackers, and schedules that are about the ‘right’ time to do things, consider your personal clock. Stop trying to force yourself into a specific routine because it works for everyone else.
I would like to say thank you to Mr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. A small thought - that New Year is a made-up time - has given me the inspiration to explore how I can break down my own construct of time.
I hope that you too can have time on your side to spend with your journal today. Let me know how you get on.