In every waking moment of our lives we are faced with one basic question: what should I do now?
Sometimes the answer is obvious. For example, if it’s time for an appointment you’ve made, your course is clear. Rituals and rhythms can also give you clear guidance: what you always do when you wake up on a weekday morning, when it’s time for lunch, when it’s time for bed, etc.
What to do can also be self-evident when emergencies strike. If your toddler knocks over a glass and it shatters, you don’t need to think: you spring into action. If your job is to maintain a web site, and you receive a notification that the site is down, you probably know exactly what to do.
But there are many moments when we don’t have a clarion cue to provide us clear direction. Counter-intuitively, such “discretionary time” can be more stressful than moments of emergency, because we are faced with greater uncertainty over what to do next. We are bewildered by seemingly infinite options. And even when we choose a course of action, we are haunted by doubt over whether it was the right choice.
We can alleviate that confusion and doubt by better informing our decisions. One way to do that is to develop the practice of checking certain “dashboards” whenever you have discretionary time.
As David Allen advises in his book Getting Things Done, the first order of business is to ascertain how much discretionary time you have by checking your calendar. Doing so may help you realize that your options are not as infinite as you thought.
For example, you may see that you only have 15 minutes until your next meeting. Such a narrow time window would preclude more time-intensive tasks like finishing a report.
Or you might realize that you’re right up against a deadline for a deliverable you almost forgot about. You actually were in an emergency situation with clear marching orders and you just didn’t know it.
The next “discretionary time dashboard” to check is your to-do (or “next actions”) lists. For your next actions lists to be useful for this purpose, they should be organized by context. For example, you could set up any of the following next actions lists:
“At Computer” list for tasks that require a keyboard, like editing a document
“Business Hours” list for tasks best done then, like Slack messaging colleagues or calling your dentist to make an appointment
“At Home” list for tasks you can only do there.
“Anywhere” list for tasks that you can do virtually anywhere, like brainstorm ideas for a project in the notes app on your phone.
If, whenever you have discretionary time, you look at the next actions lists that apply to your current context, your options will become better defined. You will have filtered out options that you cannot do at this moment. And you will have focused in on the finite selection of actions that you now have the opportunity to do and that your past self considered important enough to write a reminder about.
When in doubt, reduce your doubt by reviewing your parameters and options.
Speaking of routines, I’m reminded of Immanuel Kant’s.
I read that Kant did the same routine for several decades, never once leaving the small German town he resided in.