It Took 4 Hours to do 2 Hours of Work

I timed it.

In our book club this month in Freya’s Arbor, we are reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.

It’s as much a philosophy book as it is a time management guide and I am deeply enjoying it. I have about 45 pages left to finish before our book club meeting on Friday. Something that has struck me deeply so far is that,

“It takes as long as it takes.”

Rather than tackling a project (or procrastinating one) with the mindset of completing the overall goal, think of time taking as long as it takes. An hour takes exactly 60 minutes. There is no way to speed it up or slow it down. It could be more or less enjoyable or satisfying, but an hour will always take right about 3,600 seconds.

This is a mindset that I am already a bit known for by the people who love and spend a lot of time with me. For example, I really enjoy float therapy. There is nothing to be done except float for one hour. (It feels like magic for my mind and body, but there is substantial scientific evidence for its benefits.) I took my husband and my best friend with me each to our own float session in January. Though I had been quite a few times, it was a first for each of them.

When I emerged from my session, they had both clearly been waiting in the lobby area for some time. “What happened?” I asked. For reasons entirely their own, neither one chose to stay the full hour in their respective float chambers. What was extremely interesting to me then, and I am beginning to understand a bit better now after reading our book, is that an hour takes an hour. In other words, my husband and bestie weren’t going to leave the facility to go do something else because they were waiting for me to complete my hour.

Whether the hour was in the float chamber or in the lobby, it was still every bit of an hour. Leaving the float chamber made their experience of it shorter, but did not alter the duration of the hour one little bit.

Of course, in the float chamber, it is nearly impossible to know how much time has passed – which is part of the point. I always choose complete darkness and no sound. (If you keep lights or sound on, it pretty much defeats the purpose and negates most of the mental benefits.) Some people find it very disturbing to have no sense of the passage of time, or awareness of any sensory input. The quiet, alone with yourself is meditative. Again, this is the point. Also interestingly, in all the float sessions I’d had prior to that day, it had never once occurred to me to leave the float chamber early. I was astonished that they had both done so.

Choosing Peace Over 5 Minutes of Chaos

This same bestie is also an extremely impatient driver. I describe her style as, “It’s like she’s angry at the road and trying to punish it.” (I just read this description to her and she agreed.) When we go on road trips and encounter a metropolitan area, we change seats so that I am the driver in the more stressful situations. This is because I am substantially less bothered by traffic or other drivers’ shenanigans. This arrangement makes the trip far more enjoyable for everyone in the car. It takes as long to get to our destination as it takes to get there. She says, “It could take five minutes less time if these idiot drivers would get out of the way.” My position is that we arrive 5 minutes later, fully alive and unharmed, and significantly happier. I am not sure if she agrees to trade seats with me because she accepts my thoughts on the matter, or because I refuse to take a road trip with her otherwise. In any case, it works for us.

So if an hour takes an hour, then why did two hours this morning take four hours?

Right. Well, I started a habit sometime last year that from 9 am to 10 am every weekday, I am in "learning time.” This may include watching tutorials on YouTube, reading educational materials, or as is the case now, taking structured courses.

I typically do not schedule meetings during this timeframe, make appointments that would interfere with it, answer the phone, or check emails during this period. This is a choice I have made for my mental stimulation, benefit to my gainful work, and overall life satisfaction. It’s not about getting a course or research “done” in that hour. It is five hours per week dedicated to an activity that for years I didn’t “have time for.” I made a choice to create protections around a block of time and honor my desire to learn.

The Rolling Lockdown

Very unfortunately, that same bestie who is a menacing driver has had some devastating medical emergencies this past week. These have disrupted my usual schedule, to put it mildly. Though she is now stable, the road to recovery – well, it will take as long as it takes. But she is as close to family as is possible for me, and I to her, so I knew when she called me from the hospital at three minutes until 9:00 this morning, my protected time was going to be disrupted and I was going to allow that to happen. When we got off the phone from her update, I set a timer for my one hour of learning to be sure I didn’t sacrifice it, and therefore a portion of my overall personal happiness. Then there was another interruption so I paused my timer, handled the interruption, and picked up again. I eventually got my one hour accomplished.

Earlier, I mentioned our monthly book club meeting is this week and I have not yet finished the book. While it is not a requirement and there is no shame or guilt in our group for not having finished reading the book, I feel a special obligation because I started the book club for the primary purpose of holding myself accountable to reading on a regular basis – I knew that if I had to talk about it with other people, then I would actually make time to read. So, when my one hour of learning time was completed, I reset the timer with the intent of reading for an hour. Because of the necessities of managing the health situation, and the dogs needed to be let outside, and I got hungry, and “life be lifin’” all over the place, there were additional interruptions. By the time I finished my one hour of reading, it was 1:00 pm. One hour of learning and one hour of reading took from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. Therefore, two hours of doing took four hours to complete.

While much could be said here about protecting our time and shutting off distractions, and I generally am highly committed to those practices, there simply are circumstances in which priorities are shifted. That is currently the case for me. The point I really want to make is that a commitment to progress is highly fulfilling and is a shift in thinking for most high-achievers, such as yourself. No, I did not finish a course this morning, nor feel like I had reached some completion marker for any research. Neither did I finish the book I am meant to read before Friday. But I did, in spite of all the interruptions and higher priorities, complete one full hour of each through a rolling timer structure.

And that counts.

Rather than persuading myself that I don’t have time for continued learning, I have made learning a protected practice for myself.

Instead of procrastinating with, “I won’t get much done today,” or, “I can’t finish so I might as well not even try,” or any number of other overused soggy excuses we give ourselves, I urge you to consider that it takes as long as it takes, and you get to define the measurements.

I prefer one hour intervals, but maybe you measure a task by completing as much as you can in ten minutes. Shorter intervals work particularly well for unpleasant activities. An hour of cleaning the house can be daunting but ten minutes of cleaning the bathroom vanity can be very satisfying, and is much more likely to actually get done.

Instead of, “I didn’t complete it,” “I’ll never finish,” “It’s too hard,” and all of their nasty cousins, try letting it take as long as it takes, and measure it in intervals that work for you. Even if two hours sometimes takes four hours.