So the warrior element in how you relate to time is how “violent” a swordsman you are going to be before your day begins. How much uninterrupted time will you carve out for yourself?
— “Time Warrior” by Steve Chandler
Alright so lately I’ve been trying to carve out time where I can. It’s definitely harder as a dad and mostly I look back to, say, 5 years ago, and wonder what I was doing with all that free time. Then I look back to 10 years ago and really really wonder what I was doing with all that free time.
But hey can’t look back too much!
I’m always tempted by a good “Why I wake up at 4 AM” video. And when I do the math, I could reasonably do
- In bed by 10 PM and asleep by 10:30 PM
- Wake up at 5:30 AM
And that’d be 7 hours. Then I can play with that +/- and get 8 hours or shift things to 6 AM or 6:30 AM. It makes sense on paper but ends up tough to execute in practice. Still worth striving for though.
Sometimes I do wake up that early but don’t start out, as Time Warrior suggests, as a violent swordsman.
Instead I very quickly grab my phone and go into “shitty flow”, a term I learned from Brad Stulberg in “The Way of Excellence”
The psychologists David Pizarro and Paul Bloom coined the term shitty flow to describe the experience of being in flow but in ways that do not encourage or, even worse, work against your values and goals. Shitty flow is particularly common “when your days are filled with bullshit like emails and administrative meetings and then you’re just tired, and this is the time when you should be doing something [meaningful], but all you want to do is sit and browse Reddit or maybe YouTube on your phone,” explains Pizarro.
There are times where I actually do manage to have 1-2 hours completely free. The most alarming thing is how quickly it can disappear into “shitty flow”.
Sometimes I’ll try to catch 25 minutes to nap before the family heads out for the day. I know if I can fall asleep in 5 minutes then 20 minutes will be great for feeling refreshed. That 5 minutes can be gone in a few blinks if I open up social media.
I need to be a violent swordsman when it comes time to sleep. Carve out undistracted time to feel the sleepiness in the first place.
Anyway, I wrote this on the treadmill during a 25-minute session. Maybe not a good post. But I’m glad I wrote it. If anything, it’s 25 minutes of time I’ve carved out away from shitty flow.