Regaining our time - an invitation

"it is all too easy to discover—often after the fact—that we lack adequate availability for our colleagues, our partners, and our children. With dozens of daily emails, calls, and text notifications demanding our attention, it is all the more important to practice stillness."

- Thomas Hübl, "Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal our Trauma and our World

This quote struck me as a consistent thread through my work with different organizations, locations, and people of varying backgrounds. Whether due to the nature of how our work has evolved (work from home, hybrid, forced return to office), deep and disruptive (re)organizational changes, or the difficult circumstances all around us due to war, political division, or fundamental cultural shifts, I have repeatedly observed our strained and stretched capacity to be present and available.

At its core, there may be something we've forgotten. Though it is entirely easy to (double or triple) book our calendars to the rim with meetings, we neglect that our biology simply can't keep up, or at least, keep up in a sustainable and effective way. We essentially turn into "task zombies" where the only thing we can cognitively take care of is the next most immediate actionable thing - never mind whether that thing is important, helpful, or indeed worth doing at all. In this mode, there is no "space" for what is really needed - thoughtful attention, concentration, creativity, and authentic connection. We then somehow believe that we can do that day in and day out and then return to our homes, partners, and children and again be truly present. It's madness.

An example may help to give this some concreteness - I'm purposefully going to mix up some things to anonymize the example, but all of these are within my direct experience pretty recently:

A colleague finds out that a member of his team has decided to take their sabbatical for three months, a welcome benefit but one that will require an immediate reshuffling of who will take care of what, but that will have to wait. Immediately following at the top of the hour, my colleague then has to facilitate a key decision making steering committee, but fails to set the stage and jumps right into the middle, causing confusion and uncertainty. But there's no time to go back and clarify, because immediately afterwards there's a company wide meeting where everyone is informed that costs will have to be shifted into next year, and that restructuring and job loss is on the table for the coming year.

I emphasize that although I mixed the above example, I am highly confident that this example is characteristic of a "normal" day for many people, especially for knowledge workers, managers, executives, and many others. There is quite literally no time for our minds to prepare and shift attention to the next thing appropriately. Taking care of ourselves, managing our teams and colleagues, strategic thinking, looking forward, and problem-solving all go by the wayside in the light of the thing that must be done now. Just imagine it - taking the smartest, most highly competent people in our organizations and turning them into immediate-term task engines. What deep organizational loss.

Is there a way to turn this ship? I think so, but it requires serious attention, awareness, and sustained effort with all things like this. In the tornado of our current days, this shift will be even more challenging.

We must recapture time during the day, enabling us to mindfully focus our attention, connect, and work sustainably.

The answer is one of those "simple in concept, difficult in practice" things. But there are many ways to start right now, which can start to provide some relief.

1. We must accept that our biology has a limit to its ability to move from one thing to the next, in the midst of constant distractions. We've got to wrestle with this first before we figure out how to act on it. Our ability to "zombie" our way through a day of back-to-back meetings is not the same as actually being able to be effective in a day like that, or make the kinds of change that we need in our organizations. It takes a toll not only cognitively but also emotionally and physically.Practice - for the upcoming week, alllow yourself to capture how you felt at the start of each of your meetings perhaps on a short scale of 1 - 5. 5 meaning you were ready, had the right perspective and goals in place, and were able to really connect with what the meeting was about, and get some sort of progress. A 1 means that you weren't even exactly sure which meeting this was, what the goals were, whether you had prepped the right information, and who would be there.
2. Once we have integrated that we are, in fact, finite in this capacity, we must start to take steps to reclaim time. A good place might be to start with crucial transition time. I'm not suggesting that putting 30 or 60 minutes between meetings is wise or feasible, but if not I argue that 5 - 10 minutes might make a world of difference. Imagine having a few minutes to simply be quiet, be still, think about what's coming up next, and what you'd really like to get out of the next thing. You'll have every chance of being more thoughtful, calm in the face of stress, and present for what's happening.Practice - for the week after, schedule your meetings to end no later than 10 minutes prior to the next interaction. For meetings you don't schedule, politely excuse yourself 10 minutes prior with the communication, "I've got to prepare a bit for my next meeting." In my experience this will rarely be met with resistance; if it is, a broader discussion is needed. Try to capture how you might (or might not) feel different with a few minutes of quiet prep. Notice not only how you feel cognitively but also physically, as these days of back-to-back definitely take a toll there as well.
3. Enable a larger transition time at the end of your day. In the end, we all have to go home either to care for ourselves, or home to those that care for us and need us. We need to be present for them most of all. If you've wrecked your nervous system the whole day, you're not going to be very available at home. I admit to having some deep regret about this earlier in my career, and have had to come to peace that it is time I simply cannot get back.Practice - on the third week, block at least 30 minutes either before you plan on leaving work, or closing the laptop. Use that time to not only reflect on the day, but also to calm your nervous system - some time to be quiet and remember how you would like to be when you get home or back to your family / partners / children / yourself! Practice being still for a few minutes so that you can reconnect to yourself after the day. Capture how you feel during those last 30 minutes or so - you may feel a sense of "coming down", resetting, or you may notice the inertia of your effort during the day, which takes some time to resolve. Whatever it is, simply notice it, without judgment, and use that time to get ready for the rest of your day.

Some of you reading this may have a thought arise that "ain't no way that's gonna work where I am!" I wouldn't be surprised, but in that case, where a few minutes between meetings and a slightly longer period of quiet before shutting down for the day causes a problem, bigger organizational issues are at play. Start small, no matter how small that might be. If you can't get 10 minutes in front of next meeting, at least grab 2 or 3...if you can't shut down 30 min prior, walk slowly either to the car or somewhere before transitioning home. Get creative in the creation of these "spaces".

Take some note here we are simply trying to get some space in the face of endless meetings - we haven't yet dealt with the creation of the truly transformative space of creative, concentrated work - but that's for another day.

I'd love to hear how you are seeing this challenge - whether and how we are pushing ourselves by the calendar without integrating our biological capacity to shift and manage attention appropriately. Do you have other approaches you've already tried? How did it go?

Bob