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[2] Skip to Content
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[3]Anna Havron
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[7] Sort Your Signals
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[10] Site Notes
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[14]Anna Havron
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[19] About
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[22] About this site
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[23] Privacy Policy
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[35]
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Privacy Policy
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What Do You Want to Make Real in the World?
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Mar 29
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Written By [36]Anna Havron
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Often the question that drives people’s initial interest in productivity is:
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“How am I going to get everything done?”
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For me, at least, that was true: I got to a point where my life was too
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complicated for me to manage it without a productivity system. And so I learned
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about systems for managing time and information and tasks and goals and
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projects.
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These systems have allowed me to get a lot more done, than I could have without
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them.
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But the danger is that we might too easily substitute getting things done —
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checking off tasks, chores, projects — for living a life of depth and
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resonance.
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For example, I want to take a couple of hours [37]for an adventure to visit a
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heron rookery nearby, so I can see dozens of Great Blue herons nesting.
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But nesting season for herons coincides with my busiest time of the year.
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If I tell myself that I need to get everything done before I take time to see
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this, nesting season will be over. I will miss the experience of seeing them.
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(And I still won’t get everything done; I can always think of more that I would
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like to have done, than I can actually do.)
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Stop Asking Yourself How You’ll Get Everything Done
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Most productivity and organizational systems are geared toward the world of
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work, paid or unpaid.
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Few talk about managing your time so that you can pursue important
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relationships and activities that feed your spirit, but not your bank account.
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(Laura Vanderkam’s recent book, Tranquility by Tuesday, is one exception to
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this.)
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But what we call “leisure activities,” non-work or chore activities,
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non-productive activities in the economic sense, are the very activities you
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might look back on as the most important to cultivating a well-lived life: a
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life where you’ve had rich relationships, where you’ve taken time to create
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things that gave you pleasure to create, where you’ve taken time to contribute
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your energy and efforts to make this world a better place.
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Sometimes the belief that you must finish everything on the list, whether it’s
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paid work tasks or chores around the house, robs you of leisure time: “But I
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can’t stop working until I get everything done!”
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Part of the solution for this is using time management techniques such as [38]
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paying yourself first.
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But part of it is also reframing the question.
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Ask Instead: What Do You Want to Make Real in the World?
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What if, instead of asking yourself, “What do I need to get done,” you ask
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yourself: “What do I want to make real, in this world?”
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What do you want to make real?
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What do you want to bring from your imagination, into real life?
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What do you want to make real, that you can experience? Hiking the Appalachian
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Trail from Georgia to Maine? Having clean socks on a predictable basis
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(seriously, that is one of mine)? (Next level: having clean socks on a regular
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basis, while you are hiking the Appalachian Trail.)
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What do you want to make real that other people can enjoy or use — learning to
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play music, starting a non-profit program, creating a useful app?
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What do you want to make real, that makes this world a better place: provide
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[39]housing for purple martins so they can keep migrating to North America;
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provide housing for human beings, so all can live with dignity?
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We will all have different things that we deeply want to become real, in this
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world. We will all have different experiences and accomplishments that we hope
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to look back on, at the end of a well-lived life.
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I personally believe that if everyone took one thing they wanted to see changed
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in this world, and worked toward making that one thing real; that we would all
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be much better off.
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Making Things Real in the World Can Take a Lot of Effort; or, Almost No Effort
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at All
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Lately my key productivity question to myself is: what do I want to make real,
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in this world?
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What do I want to make real, today?
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This can be very small! The other day what I most wanted to make real, was some
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clean socks. (Doing the laundry, a care task I dislike, is much more satisfying
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for me when I cheer myself on, saying, “You go, Anna, giving yourself clean
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socks, good for you!”)
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I also want to write a book, which is a lot more work than throwing a load of
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wash into a machine.
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To make my book real in the world, I’m going to have to put in consistent
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thought and effort over time. The same is true for making things real like
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starting your own business, learning a trade, socializing a dog to become a
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beloved part of the family.
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But some things that are important to you, and that bring you a lot of joy, you
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can make real without much trouble at all.
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Making Things Real is About Responding to Opportunities
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When I was a child, I lived in the Southwest of the U.S., and in northern New
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England: places where cherry blossom trees don’t grow.
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Every year during the spring I would see the Cherry Blossom Festival pictures
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in Washington, DC, and I thought that those trees looked like blooming clouds,
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banks of flowering clouds, on the banks of the Potomac. I dreamed of seeing
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them in real life.
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It wasn’t until my thirties that I got to experience the Cherry Blossom
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Festival in Washington, DC, in real life rather than in my imagination.
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That memory of walking under hundreds of flowering cherry trees, with dark rain
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clouds overhead playing up the lightness of those short-lived blossoms, remains
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one of the most vividly piercing things I have ever experienced.
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By that time, we lived in an area where cherry trees could grow. However, our
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house already had such a large old maple shading the yard that we couldn’t
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plant other trees.
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One day, a storm came and toppled our maple tree.
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I was saddened to see it go, but realized that now our small yard had enough
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sun and space to plant a Yoshino cherry tree, just like the ones in Washington,
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DC.
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And so we did.
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cherry blossom branches with a blue sky behind them
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Here it is!
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It took less than a day to plant it. That was fourteen years ago.
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Now, it is full grown.
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I can see blossoming branches from my bedroom window, nodding in the breezes,
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with birds flying in and out of them, and wild solitary bees burrowing into the
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blossoms. Yoshino cherry trees bloom even before dandelions bloom.
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Being able to see the cherry blossoms each spring, from a flowering tree in our
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own yard, from my bedroom window no less, is — for me — one of the best things
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I have ever made real in the world.
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And it was hardly any work at all.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Copy and share - [40]the link is here. Never miss a post from annahavron.com!
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[41]Subscribe here to get blog posts via email.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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References
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Vanderkam, L. (2022) Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 ways to calm the chaos and make
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time for what matters. New York: Portfolio.
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Byington, C. (2016) Purple Martins: The Bird That Relies on Human-Built Nests,
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Cool Green Science, 12 September. Available at: https://blog.nature.org/2016/09
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/12/purple-martins-the-bird-that-relies-on-human-built-nests/ (Accessed: 28
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March 2023).
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[42] Anna Havron
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[43]
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Previous
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Previous
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City Hawk
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[44]
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Next
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Next
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Prioritize Your Time By Pretending It Is Money
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© 2024 Anna Havron. All rights reserved. | [45]Privacy policy | [46]Subsc[47]
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[4] https://www.annahavron.com/articles
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[19] https://www.annahavron.com/about
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[20] https://www.annahavron.com/subscribe
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[21] https://www.annahavron.com/site-notes
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[25] https://www.annahavron.com/articles
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[28] https://www.annahavron.com/articles-by-topic
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[29] https://www.annahavron.com/sort-your-signals-from-the-noise
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[30] https://www.annahavron.com/about
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[36] https://www.annahavron.com/?author=5f64c2a1f52bd37e36682a0d
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[37] https://www.annahavron.com/blog/big-adventure-little-adventure
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[38] https://www.annahavron.com/blog/prioritize-by-thinking-of-your-time-as-if-it-were-money
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[39] https://blog.nature.org/2016/09/12/purple-martins-the-bird-that-relies-on-human-built-nests/
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[40] https://www.annahavron.com/blog/what-do-you-want-to-make-real-in-the-world
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[41] https://www.annahavron.com/subscribe
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[43] https://www.annahavron.com/blog/city-hawk
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[44] https://www.annahavron.com/blog/prioritize-by-thinking-of-your-time-as-if-it-were-money
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