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288 lines
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[4]Anna Havron
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Folder: Site Notes
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[25]Back
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About this site
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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 [26]Anna Havron
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Often the question that drives people’s initial interest in
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productivity is: “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
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learned about systems for managing time and information and tasks and
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goals and projects.
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These systems have allowed me to get a lot more done, than I could have
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without them.
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But the danger is that we might too easily substitute getting things
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done — checking off tasks, chores, projects — for living a life of
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depth and resonance.
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For example, I want to take a couple of hours [27]for an adventure to
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visit a heron rookery nearby, so I can see dozens of Great Blue herons
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nesting.
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But nesting season for herons coincides with my busiest time of the
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year.
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If I tell myself that I need to get everything done before I take time
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to see this, nesting season will be over. I will miss the experience of
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seeing them. (And I still won’t get everything done; I can always think
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of more that I would 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
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world of 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
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account. (Laura Vanderkam’s recent book, Tranquility by Tuesday, is one
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exception to 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
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activities you might look back on as the most important to cultivating
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a well-lived life: a life where you’ve had rich relationships, where
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you’ve taken time to create things that gave you pleasure to create,
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where you’ve taken time to contribute your energy and efforts to make
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this world a better place.
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Sometimes the belief that you must finish everything on the list,
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whether it’s paid work tasks or chores around the house, robs you of
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leisure time: “But I 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
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as [28]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
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ask 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
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Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine? Having clean socks on a
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predictable basis (seriously, that is one of mine)? (Next level: having
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clean socks on a regular basis, while you are hiking the Appalachian
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Trail.)
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What do you want to make real that other people can enjoy or use —
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learning to play music, starting a non-profit program, creating a
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useful app?
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What do you want to make real, that makes this world a better place:
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provide [29]housing for purple martins so they can keep migrating to
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North America; provide housing for human beings, so all can live with
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dignity?
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We will all have different things that we deeply want to become real,
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in this world. We will all have different experiences and
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accomplishments that we hope to look back on, at the end of a
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well-lived life.
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I personally believe that if everyone took one thing they wanted to see
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changed in this world, and worked toward making that one thing real;
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that we would all be much better off.
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Making Things Real in the World Can Take a Lot of Effort; or, Almost No
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Effort at All
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Lately my key productivity question to myself is: what do I want to
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make real, 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,
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was some clean socks. (Doing the laundry, a care task I dislike, is
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much more satisfying for me when I cheer myself on, saying, “You go,
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Anna, giving yourself clean socks, good for you!”)
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I also want to write a book, which is a lot more work than throwing a
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load of wash into a machine.
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To make my book real in the world, I’m going to have to put in
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consistent thought and effort over time. The same is true for making
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things real like starting your own business, learning a trade,
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socializing a dog to become a beloved part of the family.
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But some things that are important to you, and that bring you a lot of
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joy, you 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
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northern New 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
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pictures in Washington, DC, and I thought that those trees looked like
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blooming clouds, banks of flowering clouds, on the banks of the
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Potomac. I dreamed of seeing 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
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dark rain clouds overhead playing up the lightness of those short-lived
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blossoms, remains one of the most vividly piercing things I have ever
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experienced.
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By that time, we lived in an area where cherry trees could grow.
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However, our house already had such a large old maple shading the yard
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that we couldn’t 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
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enough sun and space to plant a Yoshino cherry tree, just like the ones
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in Washington, DC.
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And so we did.
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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
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breezes, with birds flying in and out of them, and wild solitary bees
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burrowing into the blossoms. Yoshino cherry trees bloom even before
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dandelions bloom.
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Being able to see the cherry blossoms each spring, from a flowering
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tree in our own yard, from my bedroom window no less, is — for me — one
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of the best things 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 - [30]the link is here. Never miss a post from
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annahavron.com! [31]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
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and make time for what matters. New York: Portfolio.
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Byington, C. (2016) Purple Martins: The Bird That Relies on Human-Built
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Nests, Cool Green Science, 12 September. Available at:
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https://blog.nature.org/2016/09/12/purple-martins-the-bird-that-relies-
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on-human-built-nests/ (Accessed: 28 March 2023).
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[32]Anna Havron
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Previous
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Previous
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City Hawk
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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. | [33]Privacy policy |
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