My Simple Community

August 2, 2011

Yes, it’s been six months since my last post here.  What could possibly be more important than engaging in community and encouraging others to do the same?  Apparently, quite a lot.  The thing is it all sneaks up on you.  It’s not like some one thing comes in and takes hours, days or weeks of time.  Are you noticing the same?  I wake up in the morning with the expectation of accomplishing a lot and encouraging community and before I know it, it’s… well, it’s 9:15 on a Tuesday night and I finally make an entry.

Is it just me?  Or does it seem day by day there are just more really tiny things that just must be done right now? And it all seems so urgent.  Nothing can get in the way.

I am sitting at a desk looking at certainly more than 10 notes – all to do lists – none of them done.  As I look at the list, honestly? None look that important.

Thank God I am married to a wonderful woman who has her priorities in order.  Through these last six months we have – every week – done at least a couple things with neighbors to nourish our community.

So, look.. I am in no position to preach today.  But I know this much.  The moments we do give to fostering, supporting, and engaging in our community relationships should be much higher on the priority list.

12/10/2010

Is it just me? It seems every person - check that, most people - I meet are doing more than it is possible for any one person to do, particularly the person I am observing at the moment.  This goes beyond multi-tasking. This is Lifetime Juggling with increasingly more balls in the air.  And here's the thing.  I believe you can only be in physical contact with two balls at a time when you juggle. So whether it's 3 or 100 balls, you are only touching two at a time. The rest are in the air.

It seems to me that more stuff is in the air than in touch.  Is it just me?  And it's not that we are failing at Lifetime Juggling (should be - probably WILL BE - an Olympic Event). We are not dropping balls.  The "stuff" is getting done.  But with what level of personal satisfaction?

I think I love technology.  I am pretty sure I can no longer live easily without it.  I am certain technology has enabled me to have far more than one ball in the air at a time.  Technology can also be largely credited, I suspect, for the fact that so few balls are dropped.  But I also suspect technology is what is largely responsible for the proliferation of new balls!

I mean really, just how much do I HAVE to accomplish here? And what happens when a few balls get dropped?  I am one of those who have that inner thing that says I must NEVER drop a ball.  That "thing" lives inside me right next door to another thing that says I can never be late.

More balls in the air. More stuff gets done. As I approach the end of 2010 and consider all the stuff I have gotten done - and how few balls I have dropped - I am drawing a sharper focus on where my time went and how much quality community - and family - time I sacrificed to run at 180% with few dropped balls.

How about you?

August 29, 2010

Time is at the heart of everything. If someone asks you “What’s new?” and it’s possible to tell them you may not be doing enough with your life. Maybe it’s time to take inventory of how you spend your time. I often find my to-do list considerably heavier than the weight of hours I have to invest against it. And I think I get stuck or end up doing less valuable things because I think too much about a variety of things on the list that exist with varying time requirements – some take minutes, others take months; some are needed now, others in years.

Every day we have 24 hours in front of us, every week 168. When was the last time you thought about how your typical day or week goes, where the time goes? As a researcher, I most enjoy studying the use of time. I find it fascinating how important time is but how unconscious we are to how we use it. Can you imagine taking a job without knowing how much you would be paid? We certainly focus on where our money comes from and where it goes, but give little thought to our time.

From my research, the typical American believes they have between 2-3 hours a day of uncommitted time or “free time.”  In reality, when you analyze how they actually spent their time, the average is closer to six hours a day or 42 hours a week – the same amount of time associated with a full time job. That means we are losing track of about four hours a day.  There is nothing wrong with that.

I just want to suggest time is your greatest asset. But getting a handle on how you are spending it you will gain great insight on your priorities.  It doesn’t matter how you think you spend your time or what you say you do with your time. How you actually spend your time tells you what is important.

Feeling stuck? Take inventory. Start a spreadsheet or make a list of hours in the day. Break it into 15 minute intervals. Include all 24 hours – some people are stunned with what they do in the middle of the night. Then commit to write down the dominant activity of every 15 minute period. One day will be insightful.  For some, after a few days they have learned enough to see patterns in time they didn’t expect, for others it takes a week or more. But I assure you, you WILL be surprised and it will be worth the time invested to do it.

What does this have to do with community?  The biggest reason we have for not doing things is “I don’t have time.”  Well, guess what, you do.

June 26, 2010

What do you need to invest in order to accomplish the things that are important to you? As a generalization in America, I would say we turned to money, first, as the way to accomplish most things between the years of 1950 to 2000.  We bought it. Plain and simple.

Money is scarce today. For most, it will be scarce for quite a while. So how do we get things done now? Even if you are millions of dollars in debt you have exactly the same amount of one resource as the richest person on Earth. No matter who you are or what your condition, you get exactly 24 hours in a day.  You have time. And, I believe, time has always been the most important source of wealth – even in the years Americans bought most of what they wanted. Because when you die (sorry for the morbid thought) your time on Earth is done along with everything you accumulated.

So today, even if you have no money or are severely in debt, you have tremendous wealth in the 24 hours of this day. Ordinarily I would have said that time is enough to accomplish whatever you need. But I no longer believe that.

Among the many ways technology has changed our lives perhaps the most powerful is the exponential increase in the speed with which we produce larger quantities, varieties, and new iterations of literally everything. It is impossible to fully experience anything anymore because there are so many options.  As a result, the biggest challenge, the largest obstacle to accomplishing any goal beyond yourself is getting the attention of other people you need to engage to make it work. You need to get their attention to get their time. You need their time to get money.

As long as your goals are personal – having nothing to do with the time of others – attention can be managed. That said, have you noticed how hard it is to keep focused on anything you do? There are so many other things bumping into your thought process to divert your attention – even when it’s JUST YOU doing whatever you are doing. It’s hard to pay attention.

Then extend that to doing things with others. How do you get their attention? I think the key to success is getting and sustaining the attention of others.

Many would say this post is too long, that I lost the attention of most after 25 words. Ironically, I continue to write even though I know that is true.  Of the hundreds of millions of blogs and websites that exist, a handful of people come here. Of that handful, maybe ten percent read the whole thing.

Simple Community is really two short books in one – each 70 pages. That’s really short. Though thousands have been sold, I don’t know ten people who have read the whole thing!  By the way, people are buying the book, they just aren’t reading it all. My next book will be no more than 50 pages.

If you are doing anything that requires others, the two questions you must answer are: how do I get their attention, and how do I keep it?  Good luck with that.

While you may feel pressed and like you are unable to get everything done – I certainly feel that way most of the time – you HAVE time.

You don’t waste it. It just gets away from you.

There are 168 hours in a week. If you work and travel to get to work for 60 hours a week (and I bet you don’t), that still leaves 108 hours. If you sleep 8 hours a day, that still leaves 52 hours in a week (and you are sleeping well with 8 a day!).

Fifty-two hours a week to eat and such is a little over 7 hours a day.

Do you really do chores for 7 hours a day?

We have time.

We just don’t think much about how we use it.  You can do something about that.

You have a computer. You probably have a spreadsheet program like Excel.  Along the first column enter the hours of a day starting with midnight. Do it in 15 minute blocks 12:00, 12:15, 12:30 and so on all the way down to midnight. Then for a day, a few days, a week, write down what you did during all of those quarter hours. When you finish, you will learn some amazing things about your time. If you do this for a week, it will take no more than two of those quarter hours to enter what you did and maybe another 15 minutes to ponder what it means, but it may change the way you think of - and invest – your time for life.

I’ll even save you some time. Email me at mail@mycommunity.com and I’ll send you an excel spreadsheet ready to go.