The Lie of Busy-ness

Being frantically busy isn’t the same thing as being productive.

This hit me hard last night when I migrated to a new Bullet Journal notebook last night. My old volume was full.

The migration process takes about an hour. It’s an hour that makes you think.

It was nice to review the notebook.  I can get caught up in the day to day and forget what I’ve accomplished.  The old Bullet Journals, especially when I am migrating to a new one, are an amazing way to review the past few months, take credit for what I did do as well as figure out where I’m falling down on doing what I want done.

As I was migrating, I noticed I’ve not been giving a project the attention it deserves as I was migrating different collections and projects from one notebook to the other.  It got me to thinking about how important that project really was. Maybe I need to let it go.

Except…

I migrated the collection about that project.  If I took the trouble to hand-write all that stuff, it’s still important.  If I let things slide until the next time I migrate, I’d say that’s a clear signal that it’s not something all that important to me any more.

I love that clarity. 

I joke, sometimes, that the Bullet Journal changed my life.  It’s hilarious, but it did.  It brought a lot of clarity to not only what I want, but how I actually spend my days. 

I think it’s funny that this little system and notebook, so low-tech, has been so useful to me.  I mean, I love gadgets. I love beepy reminders.  I love all the new tech.  I’m an early adopter as often as my purse allows. You wanna talk “sparking joy?”  Tech is it for me.

But that notebook surpasses it all.  The reality is that it works because I am not consistent.  Some days I’m on the ball and focused.  Other days, I am not on the ball at all.  Most digital systems don’t seem to allow for the ebb and flow of my energy the way my Bullet Journal does.  Most digital systems don’t allow for review, don’t allow for a reality check.  You get a snapshot of the present and that’s it.

For all that, yes, living in the moment is a good thing, when your moment is full of self-reproach about how you’re letting your life drift away, or that you never see your family like you want to, being able to review and say, “Well, you took a trip to visit them SEVEN TIMES last year!” or “You completed that course, wrote those articles, sewed that dress, and helped your son out where he needed it” it helps as a reality check, not only for the negative, but for the positive.

Tasks in Outlook don’t help with that.  They don’t show the shape of your days as well.  Remember the Milk might be amazing for scheduling recurring tasks.  It’s not so great when Life Happens.

None of them really encourage things like taking notes on one’s vacation to remember the good times.   I mean, sure, sure, I’m an enthusiastic diarist, but in terms of referencing what I’ve done from anything but an in-the-moment rant, the Bullet Journal has it over the things I write in my daily pages.

The biggest power of the Bullet Journal system for me is that things don’t fall through the cracks.  It is amazing the amount of time one wastes being reactive and scrambling to catch up.

The problem is I’m so used to things falling through the cracks that I’m still not used to being on the ball to the degree I am now.  You wouldn’t think that you’d have to overcome that sinking sensation of “I know I’m falling down and forgetting something” but if you’ve experienced it for forty-odd years, it’s like this weird hole when you realize that no, for the most part, you’re on top of things.

I’m still not used to it, which is, I suppose, why I write about organization with such a sense of wonder.  It’s new to me not to be frantically playing catch up on all the things I needed to do.  Busy?  Hell yeah, I’m often busy.  But oh! there is such a difference between being calmly busy and frantically trying to stay on top of things.

I will say that being used to being frantic might give you the illusion of being actively productive.

My Bullet Journal has proved that to be a stinkin’ lie.

What are Your Standards?

I was re-reading a book called Home Comforts yesterday. The author was a lawyer, but really likes being a homemaker better. She approaches it from a professional point of view.

One of the things I found fascinating was something she said in her early chapters — that when you try to organize your home, you need to decide on what you consider an acceptable baseline.

This isn’t what someone else thinks is an acceptable baseline, but what is okay and makes YOU happy. She comments that one of the things she does that is utterly contrary to what a 1950s-trained homemaker would do is allow her child to keep a project in progress out. Everything else needed to be put away, but while the kid is assembling that Lego Helm’s Deep (I pick that as a fairly involved project) putting the toys away doesn’t include putting away that half-built model in her home.

It was an interesting thread to pull.

I think a lot of people who struggle with keeping their homes without shame do is pick a standard that isn’t THEIRS. They don’t have a baseline that’s okay with them. They just see pictures from magazines and homemaking blogs without giving a single thought to how they actually live.

I struggled with this a lot. The house would get untidy and I’d marathon clean so that it was “perfect” then it would get messy and so on.

My baseline isn’t “perfect” (does that exist outside of a staged home for sale?). I was thinking about that as I was tidying a few things away to dust this morning. I had some random stuff that had piled on the dresser in the past few days. You know, things that are certainly out of place but haven’t reached the “mess” threshold in my mind yet. I had a coathanger, a nightgown, my blood glucose meter and sharps bin, a health pamphlet, my Kindle, a water bottle, and a custard cup I’d been using to have a snack of nuts. Staged for a photograph? No. Able to put away quickly enough that dusting didn’t seem like an overwhelming chore? Oh yes.

It was my baseline. It was acceptable to me. I know that FlyLady urges people to try to keep their homes in such a condition that it’s less than fifteen minutes worth of messy — meaning that you could put away clutter in fifteen minutes or less.

That’s not a bad baseline, either. But you know, you could choose anything you wanted, as long as it’s a standard you thought about. It’s the thinking about that’s important.

For instance… Mail on the counter. Is that okay? For my household, it sure seems to be. In tidying up for my Clean All the Things day, yeah, I did toss and shred some mail and file some stuff to take care of. So, a few pieces of mail on the counter is dandy. It gets taken care of in a timely manner.

What about laundry? Some people have a Re-wear Chair. This is a place they set out clothes that they’ve worn, but don’t want to put back in drawers or a closet. Other people have a rule that if it’s clean enough to re-wear, it’s clean enough to put away. What’s your rule?

The idea, and I really liked it, is to set some Official Standard in your mind. Do dishes have to be washed and put away? Just washed and in the drying rack? At least on to soak? What’s YOUR standard and baseline that’s really okay with how you live?

The UFYH author, Rachel Hoffman, encourages anyone sharing space to think about this and have it spelled out. While she’s right that it’s good for anyone living with someone else, I think it’s also good for agreements with oneself.

I also think that setting the bar too high for whatever you genuinely have time for is counter-productive. If you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to hit that bar and won’t do anything. I strongly discourage anyone from setting a standard that would appear in a staged shot for a magazine.

The home is a dynamic place. You LIVE there. Setting an acceptable standard that means you could have some judgy person drop in and have nothing to judge is silly, counter-productive, and frankly pointless. The home should be a safe space, and you need to think about what the environment is that makes you feel safe. That’s going to be different for different people.

I was going to include a picture from my own home and decided not to, as it’s not the point of this little musing. What’s the standard that makes YOU happy and comfortable? My house doesn’t count.