You got to steal from the time of a life that’s passing by. – Stephan Jenkins

It was only a few days ago that I was mathing through the dilemma of ‘time’ as we all get older, in one of my posts.  I also just got done reading Getting Things Done by David Allen a few days ago. It is a strange thing to be so conscious of how much (or how little) time is passing and what you are doing with that time.  It is also a strange thing to be in Hawaii where time has much less societal importance then other places I’ve lived (namely New York and Tokyo), but maybe not so strange as it may be what allowed me to be so conscious about the whole time issue.

For those of you not in the know, GTD is a system that guides its practitioners into a series of behaviors/methods that allows them to reduce stress and increase efficiency and productivity both in work and personal lives (and everything you do).  It sounded like a good thing to learn and implement, and after reading it, I can confirm that it still does.  For someone with slight OCD tendencies it helps aid me in processing everything that I need or want to get done in life into it’s own place, and more importantly out of my head.  It’s not until you have a complete list of everything ever that you want to do or accomplish in life (from getting a new toothbrush to retiring before 60), that you can really begin to prioritize or make decisions about what is reasonable to expect to get done.

I realized that I want to do it all.  Not everything ever, but everything that would ever make it onto my list.  I don’t knowingly suffer from any attention deficit disorders, but I do suffer from something drastically different that has very similar symptoms.  I am interested in too many things, and so my attention can be kept focused on one thing for only so long before I realize that there are way too many other things on the list that I need to get started on.  It’s never about boredom, or the inability to focus, it’s about the ability to focus on too much at one time (but not enough concentrated focus).

Even as I type this my iTunes is playing through songs on shuffle and I actively skip or replay songs as I see fit, my iChat is open and I am engaged in conversations with people in Israel and California, Word is open with two wire frames of the same web-page (one as the user sees when logged in and the other logged out), Firefox is running with 4 tabs open (my Basecamp work to-do list, MouseHunt application in Facebook, my WordPress back-end, and the Something Awful forums), Coda is open with 3 php files that comprise the component I am developing from the wire frames in Word.  All this on two monitors while my left leg is shaking rapidly and my right hand is petting Maxine.

I can’t do it all.  I can’t even get relatively small and simple things done half the time.  It’s not that I don’t have enough time though.  I say I don’t have enough time, but the thing is, I know people who get more done then I do and they don’t have any extra hours that I don’t have.  We all live by the same clock (just in different time zones), we fill the exact same hours with very different things. I’m not alone (Amy leaves Friday for two months, but even then I won’t be alone), but I have also noticed in recent conversations with many of my friends that they experience similar thoughts/feelings about the time in their life and how they are spending it.

Make a list, of everything you want to get done ever, ever.  Or just start it with some big/medium/small picture stuff.  Are the decisions you are making about what to fill your time with really what you want to be doing?  Can you envision those hours a little bit better?  If you make them better, are you moving yourself towards one of the end-goals on the list?  Are you working towards anything on the list at all right now?  How hard will it be to adjust to working towards things on that list?  I don’t know, but I’m about to find out.  The less time and energy I spend on things not on the list, the more time I spend pantsless.