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1 [1] 2 0 3 [2] Skip to Content 4 [3]Anna Havron 5 [4] Articles 6 [5] Blog 7 [6] Articles by Topic 8 [7] Sort Your Signals 9 [8] About 10 [9] Subscribe 11 [10] Site Notes 12 [11] About this site 13 [12] Privacy Policy 14 Open Menu Close Menu 15 [14]Anna Havron 16 [15] Articles 17 [16] Blog 18 [17] Articles by Topic 19 [18] Sort Your Signals 20 [19] About 21 [20] Subscribe 22 [21] Site Notes 23 [22] About this site 24 [23] Privacy Policy 25 Open Menu Close Menu 26 [25] 27 Folder: Articles 28 [26] Back 29 [27] 30 Blog 31 [28] 32 Articles by Topic 33 [29] 34 Sort Your Signals 35 [30] 36 About 37 [31] 38 Subscribe 39 [32] 40 Folder: Site Notes 41 [33] Back 42 [34] 43 About this site 44 [35] 45 Privacy Policy 46 47 What Do You Want to Make Real in the World? 48 49 Mar 29 50 Written By [36]Anna Havron 51 52 Often the question that drives people’s initial interest in productivity is: 53 “How am I going to get everything done?” 54 55 For me, at least, that was true: I got to a point where my life was too 56 complicated for me to manage it without a productivity system. And so I learned 57 about systems for managing time and information and tasks and goals and 58 projects. 59 60 These systems have allowed me to get a lot more done, than I could have without 61 them. 62 63 But the danger is that we might too easily substitute getting things done — 64 checking off tasks, chores, projects — for living a life of depth and 65 resonance. 66 67 For example, I want to take a couple of hours [37]for an adventure to visit a 68 heron rookery nearby, so I can see dozens of Great Blue herons nesting. 69 70 But nesting season for herons coincides with my busiest time of the year. 71 72 If I tell myself that I need to get everything done before I take time to see 73 this, nesting season will be over. I will miss the experience of seeing them. 74 (And I still won’t get everything done; I can always think of more that I would 75 like to have done, than I can actually do.) 76 77 Stop Asking Yourself How You’ll Get Everything Done 78 79 Most productivity and organizational systems are geared toward the world of 80 work, paid or unpaid. 81 82 Few talk about managing your time so that you can pursue important 83 relationships and activities that feed your spirit, but not your bank account. 84 (Laura Vanderkam’s recent book, Tranquility by Tuesday, is one exception to 85 this.) 86 87 But what we call “leisure activities,” non-work or chore activities, 88 non-productive activities in the economic sense, are the very activities you 89 might look back on as the most important to cultivating a well-lived life: a 90 life where you’ve had rich relationships, where you’ve taken time to create 91 things that gave you pleasure to create, where you’ve taken time to contribute 92 your energy and efforts to make this world a better place. 93 94 Sometimes the belief that you must finish everything on the list, whether it’s 95 paid work tasks or chores around the house, robs you of leisure time: “But I 96 can’t stop working until I get everything done!” 97 98 Part of the solution for this is using time management techniques such as [38] 99 paying yourself first. 100 101 But part of it is also reframing the question. 102 103 Ask Instead: What Do You Want to Make Real in the World? 104 105 What if, instead of asking yourself, “What do I need to get done,” you ask 106 yourself: “What do I want to make real, in this world?” 107 108 What do you want to make real? 109 110 What do you want to bring from your imagination, into real life? 111 112 What do you want to make real, that you can experience? Hiking the Appalachian 113 Trail from Georgia to Maine? Having clean socks on a predictable basis 114 (seriously, that is one of mine)? (Next level: having clean socks on a regular 115 basis, while you are hiking the Appalachian Trail.) 116 117 What do you want to make real that other people can enjoy or use — learning to 118 play music, starting a non-profit program, creating a useful app? 119 120 What do you want to make real, that makes this world a better place: provide 121 [39]housing for purple martins so they can keep migrating to North America; 122 provide housing for human beings, so all can live with dignity? 123 124 We will all have different things that we deeply want to become real, in this 125 world. We will all have different experiences and accomplishments that we hope 126 to look back on, at the end of a well-lived life. 127 128 I personally believe that if everyone took one thing they wanted to see changed 129 in this world, and worked toward making that one thing real; that we would all 130 be much better off. 131 132 Making Things Real in the World Can Take a Lot of Effort; or, Almost No Effort 133 at All 134 135 Lately my key productivity question to myself is: what do I want to make real, 136 in this world? 137 138 What do I want to make real, today? 139 140 This can be very small! The other day what I most wanted to make real, was some 141 clean socks. (Doing the laundry, a care task I dislike, is much more satisfying 142 for me when I cheer myself on, saying, “You go, Anna, giving yourself clean 143 socks, good for you!”) 144 145 I also want to write a book, which is a lot more work than throwing a load of 146 wash into a machine. 147 148 To make my book real in the world, I’m going to have to put in consistent 149 thought and effort over time. The same is true for making things real like 150 starting your own business, learning a trade, socializing a dog to become a 151 beloved part of the family. 152 153 But some things that are important to you, and that bring you a lot of joy, you 154 can make real without much trouble at all. 155 156 Making Things Real is About Responding to Opportunities 157 158 When I was a child, I lived in the Southwest of the U.S., and in northern New 159 England: places where cherry blossom trees don’t grow. 160 161 Every year during the spring I would see the Cherry Blossom Festival pictures 162 in Washington, DC, and I thought that those trees looked like blooming clouds, 163 banks of flowering clouds, on the banks of the Potomac. I dreamed of seeing 164 them in real life. 165 166 It wasn’t until my thirties that I got to experience the Cherry Blossom 167 Festival in Washington, DC, in real life rather than in my imagination. 168 169 That memory of walking under hundreds of flowering cherry trees, with dark rain 170 clouds overhead playing up the lightness of those short-lived blossoms, remains 171 one of the most vividly piercing things I have ever experienced. 172 173 By that time, we lived in an area where cherry trees could grow. However, our 174 house already had such a large old maple shading the yard that we couldn’t 175 plant other trees. 176 177 One day, a storm came and toppled our maple tree. 178 179 I was saddened to see it go, but realized that now our small yard had enough 180 sun and space to plant a Yoshino cherry tree, just like the ones in Washington, 181 DC. 182 183 And so we did. 184 185 cherry blossom branches with a blue sky behind them 186 187 Here it is! 188 189 It took less than a day to plant it. That was fourteen years ago. 190 191 Now, it is full grown. 192 193 I can see blossoming branches from my bedroom window, nodding in the breezes, 194 with birds flying in and out of them, and wild solitary bees burrowing into the 195 blossoms. Yoshino cherry trees bloom even before dandelions bloom. 196 197 Being able to see the cherry blossoms each spring, from a flowering tree in our 198 own yard, from my bedroom window no less, is — for me — one of the best things 199 I have ever made real in the world. 200 201 And it was hardly any work at all. 202 203 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 204 205 Copy and share - [40]the link is here. Never miss a post from annahavron.com! 206 [41]Subscribe here to get blog posts via email. 207 208 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 209 210 References 211 212 Vanderkam, L. (2022) Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 ways to calm the chaos and make 213 time for what matters. New York: Portfolio. 214 215 Byington, C. (2016) Purple Martins: The Bird That Relies on Human-Built Nests, 216 Cool Green Science, 12 September. Available at: https://blog.nature.org/2016/09 217 /12/purple-martins-the-bird-that-relies-on-human-built-nests/ (Accessed: 28 218 March 2023). 219 220 221 [42] Anna Havron 222 [43] 223 Previous 224 Previous 225 226 City Hawk 227 228 [44] 229 Next 230 Next 231 232 Prioritize Your Time By Pretending It Is Money 233 234 © 2024 Anna Havron. 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