There is always enough time to do what matters.
Cause time stops still
Feels like it's all going nowhere
Time's not real
And when it's drifting away
'Cause the time stops still
Feels like we're all going under
The tide's not real
And we're just drifting in space
- from "Rush" by Kali Uchis
Last year I missed an appointment and cried. It was on my calendar, but for the wrong time. I was annoyed and embarrassed, but more than anything else, I was exhausted.
I was exhausted by always missing, rescheduling, rushing, forgetting, juggling, and packing my schedule. My days were always full and I rarely took the time to relax, to ease from one thing into the other. Every task and event began to bleed into another. My calendar was my enemy, a very constant reminder that I was failing to steward my own time well enough to enjoy it.
Slowing down is a lesson I am always learning. Some days, I pace myself well and I'm closer to the feeling of ease and balance like I'm on a nice afternoon stroll. On other days I find myself stumbling desperately to keep pace with my time commitments and responsibilities, feeling guilt and shame for not managing my time better.
But in those moments, I push to remind myself that there is always enough time to do what matters. Time is made to appear like such a limited, scarce resource. There never seems to be enough of it, so everyone is always rushing in every direction trying to catch up with themselves.
The reality of it, though, is that the only way to catch up with yourself, to walk in pace with your own life, to set your own rhythm in a world centered on speed, is to slow down.
Allow me to elucidate how I managed to slow down to keep up with myself:
There are entire industries rooted in the perception of scarcity. It is very intentional that we're all being made to feel like there is not enough time, like we're not doing enough, like we're not moving fast enough.
It took some time, but I shifted my thinking. I serve a God of abundance. I lack nothing, including time. I have enough time to do what I need to do to become who I am destined to be.
And once I began to shift my focus from how much time I had to how I could best use that time, everything changed. I knew I was capable of solving this problem. I knew I was capable of creating systems that would support ease, rest, leisure, efficiency, and patience. I expressed gratitude for this kind of problem, and that I had the time for the things that I loved to do. So then, I got to work.
I was very tired of hearing myself tell people "I forgot." While forgetfulness is a very human thing to experience, it is not one that I want to make commonplace in my life and my interactions with people. So, in the spirit of being a problem-solver, I created a system that would supplement my memory.
For every single event in my life, there is a reminder. I have it set that 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 5 minutes before every single event on my calendar, I will receive a reminder on every single device I own. My watch will vibrate, my phone will push a banner, and my computer will alert me with noise. It may seem like overkill, but the impact it's had on how I show up is palpable. I am more confident and more pleasant than I would be if I had completely forgotten about the meeting and showed up 5 minutes late.
For events in real life, like a dinner reservation or an appointment, I utilize Apple's "Time to Leave" feature, which accounts for traffic to let me know when I should be on the way. Now, this feature is a bit buggy sometimes, so I don't completely rely on it. But when it works, it helps. I always double up with Waze's "Plan a drive" feature, which is less user-friendly but still gets the job done.
When I treated time as a scarcity, I piled my commitments on top of each other and was never showing up at 100%. I realized later that I can only do so many things per day well, so to position myself for success, I had to optimize.
To solve this, I simply stopped filling up the empty space on my calendar. I created a limit of 2 non-work/school/gym-related activities per day. If I have an appointment on Tuesday morning, I'll push my lunch with a friend to Wednesday. I even stopped going to the gym in the middle of the day, so I could avoid rushing to meetings.
I also started to avoid mid-week flights or super early morning flights. Please hear me when I say, the greatest betrayal to yourself is getting off a plane and having less than an hour to drop off luggage, grab breakfast, head to a co-working space, and go to work as if you haven't been up since 4am that morning to catch the first flight out. It's pain. Every time.
And I don't care what the TikTok girlies say, working from an airport is WACK.
So, cheers to slowing down. To taking your time. To moving with grace and confidence. To doing it right the first time. To slowing down long enough to look around you and be in awe of the beauty in the world. To being in awe of the beauty within you. <3
