Time Management: Judgement

Last week I wrote about accomplishing more by doing less. I ended by saying that although I have decided to pull back from many of the things that keep me busy in order to spend more time writing, I still find myself unable to say “no” to volunteer organizations.

And if I find a good cause hard to resist, there are those closets that need cleaning! When I have an entire afternoon without commitments, a perfect time to write, unimportant household tasks suddenly become a priority.

On the January 13 episode of On Being with Krista Tippett, journalist Oliver Burkeman, author of Four thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,  shared his thoughts about this phenomenon:  

“It’s not a coincidence that the things that matter trigger these feelings that we’d rather run away from into the pleasing and numbing and comfortable world of distraction…”

“When I sit down to do a piece of writing,” he continues, “The stakes are high, because I care about it and I want it to be good, and I have no control over whether I’m going to prove up to it or whether other people are going to receive it well, so I’m in this familiar human situation of really caring that things turn out a certain way and realizing that I don’t get to say whether they will.

While I take comfort in knowing that my habit is not uncommon, I also recognize that I need to let go of the fear of judgement. Yes, I want an audience to like my work. That’s why I give it care and attention and seek feedback. If I make the work as good as I believe it can be, I need to stop worrying about whether it is as good as another writer’s. I do not plan to earn a living from writing. I do it because I like the process, as hard as it is, and because I have something to say. The closets can wait.