On Time and Devotion to the Process

A few days ago it came to my mind, while going to put water for coffee for the second time during the day, about the difference in our perception of time when activities are planned or done without planning.

When you plan an activity, you try to include all variables that occupy the time of that activity. When this duration is calculated correctly, our perception of the passing minutes is more relaxed, because we know we have the time to do everything we need to do.

It is as if minutes flowed more slowly and we had the ability to manipulate time. When, on the other hand, we spend the day ‘doing what needs to be done’, if we have many things to do the perception of the passing minutes changes: it is a fight against time, and we always lose.

We lose because maybe we realize that in 1 minute we have a deadline and we are still on the high seas, or that there is an appointment on the other side of the city and we are still in a meeting, a meeting we had forgotten was there. We try to compact time, but it cannot be done.

If instead we plan well, we can ‘stretch’ time. Make it a companion of our adventure, without stressing ourselves thinking about how many things we could do and how many we would like to do but cannot.

On a practical level, on Sunday evening I plan all personal activities in my calendar in blocks of an hour (or even 15, 30 or 45 minutes) starting from the to-do list I have on the app Things (on macOS, iOS and iPadOS), adding, when possible, travel times from one place to another (if I have to move) and also lunch time, which I usually block for an hour.

It is obvious: planning changes constantly, because it always happens that there is some urgency or some expiring opportunity, but it is an iterative process: if the first time I set a 1-hour slot to work on an article or a project, and then I realize that instead it takes me 2 hours, I modify on my calendar the duration of the event, so as to have a history of how long that activity actually lasted. The next time I will copy that activity directly, instead of creating a new one.

This helps me to be consistent with the experience I have in doing things.

When I made coffee after lunch today, I was in the lunch slot, which I had set between 14:30 and 15:30. At 15:15, after washing the dishes, I thought of putting water for coffee, and in the meantime tidying up the room a bit. A few minutes later, while going to get the water - which had heated up in the saucepan - in the kitchen, I got a little anxious because I thought I was already late with the activity following lunch. And instead it was still 15:20, and I still had all the time to go back to the room, prepare my coffee and relax a few more minutes before starting.

I had managed to control time in my favor, yet I hadn’t noticed it yet.

I made this reasoning the day before coming across a very interesting video, which I link in the description of this episode. At a certain point, a passage struck me particularly:

“We are absolutely devoted to the process. That's how my company, which pays nothing to anyone, works so well. We are not devoted to the goal."

And it continued like this:

“[…] Whatever is the trend today, is your goal, isn't it?”

And again:

“Without goals we will go as far as possible. With the process maybe you crash in front of the goal. If you reach the goal you will be depressed, if you don't reach it you will be frustrated.---Devotion is the way significant goals are reached. How can the goal be at the same time the starting point and the arrival point?”

The most important phrase, the one that encompasses everything, I believe is this:

The issue is how beautiful and significant the life you lived is.

---

That day a few things happened. I opened my eyes at 4:05, I got up at 5:00 after doing my usual 3 minutes of wake-up meditation, and at 5:50 I was ready to leave, saying goodbye to my partner while she was still sleeping.

I didn’t work until 14:00, when I arrived at the office and after having lunch. Throughout the morning I thought about resting, meditating on the plane, listening to podcasts and reading articles. I did everything. I no longer have FOMO, I don’t know why but I manage to be in control of the flow that comes towards me every day. Maybe because I do less of what took up most of my time. Like watching TV series. I don’t know. But I realize that this standard of living makes me content, happy.

The phrases I read at the beginning of the article are by Sadhguru, an Indian mystic and yogi.

At the age of 25, on September 23, 1982 Jaggi Vasudev drove to Chamundi Hill, where he sat on a rock on which he had a spiritual experience: “Until that moment in my life, I always thought: ‘this is me’ and that someone else is something else. But for the first time I no longer knew what was ‘me’ and what was not. Suddenly, what I was was simply everywhere. The very rock I was sitting on, the air I breathed, the very atmosphere around me: I had just exploded into everything. Which sounds like absolute madness. I thought this experience had lasted ten to fifteen minutes, but, after returning to my normal consciousness, I had been sitting there for four and a half hours, fully conscious, with eyes open, but time was simply upside down”. Six weeks after this experience, he left his business to a friend of his and traveled for a long time trying to understand his mystical experience. After a year of meditation and travel, Jaggi Vasudev decided to teach yoga to share his inner experiences.

Sadhguru’s words also echo a lot of what James Clear says in his latest book Atomic Habits: “what counts is not the goal, but the system, the process.” The process helps to be continuous, brings the momentum needed.

I learned that by establishing a process I feel more able to defend my convictions. I am still far from fighting successfully, but in the meantime I have taken the first steps.

All this is also made easier, operatively, in my opinion by the new workflow I am using on Agenda: every note is associated with an event on the calendar, and in this way at the end of the day I can review the notes extremely faster. Maybe I found a way to keep my ideas firm on the ground instead of letting them fly away. I had tried with tasks (Things 3), with scattered notes (OneNote), with organized notes (Evernote), with the macOS Notes app, but nothing went well. Maybe Agenda is the solution.

And also keeping a diary, with DayOne, every evening helps me to vent ideas, and to go to bed discharged and therefore relaxed, empty. Having many ideas is a good thing, but if you have too many ideas and you can’t catalyze them, put them into practice, the disappointment is really great.

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