On Having A Successful Day
I’m constantly changing my approach to the day. But recently I’ve adopted something which is much simpler and, so far, much more effective.
Effectively, I have three jobs: I am a parish priest. I am a writer. And I make podcasts. I have done my best to separate out these roles and to assign different things to different days or sections of days. I have effectively abandoned this strategy because it just doesn’t work very well for me.
Here’s how I have been approaching things recently: Firstly, I have a list of administrative tasks in my diary that I update each day. Secondly, at the beginning of each day, I separate the day into two and write down which tasks I will do in the morning, and which in the afternoon. If I am doing something at lunch, such as exercise or cutting my hair cut (as I did this week), I will write that in there too. I give myself little tickboxes to tick everything off, which gives a sense of tangible satisfaction. The tasks are largely the same every day and are given a time value: 30 minutes of admin in the morning and in the afternoon, an hour writing my book, 30 minutes writing Substack, 30 minutes writing the Sunday sermon, 30 minutes (sometimes an hour) preparing my catechesis group, an hour preparing the podcast. That mostly covers everything. There are variations on different days. Tuesday is usually the day I prepare the podcast and answer all the emails. Thursday and Friday are technically my church days but often other things have to be done on those days also, and, since I do so much church stuff the rest of the week, I think this is okay. I write at the top of my to-do list, which I make using the Notes app on my iPhone: A Successful Day: This is what a successful day looks like: doing these things.
I don’t know what it’s like for other people, but I have always found the most effective approach is to do things consistently, every day, even if only for a small amount of time. 30 minutes a day might not sound like much, but, over the course of a working week of five days, that is 2 and a half hours. An hour of admin a day seems short because it eats so much time, but that’s five hours a week, which must surely be enough. So that’s a principle that works for me. It helps me to be focussed. It helps me to be disciplined.
What works for you?
A quotation from Marcus Aurelius to finish this section with the bold emphases added by me. On focusing on the task at hand:
At every hour devote yourself in a resolute spirit, as befits a Roman and a man, to fulfilling the task in hand with a scrupulous and unaffected dignity, and with love for others, and independence, and justice; and grant yourself a respite from all other preoccupations. And this you will achieve if you perform every action as though it were your last, freed from all lack of purpose and wilful deviation from the rule of reason, and free from duplicity, self-love, and dissatisfaction with what is allotted to you.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2.5
On Making the Right Decisions
…what is subject to change (is) in a sense always coming to birth…Being born, in the sense of constantly experiencing change, does not come about as the result of external initiative…Such a birth occurs by choice. We are in some manner our own parents, giving birth to ourselves by our own free choice in accordance with whatever we wish to be…moulding ourselves to the teaching of virtue or vice.
Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, Book II.3
God gives us real choices, and this is what makes our lives meaningful. If we did not truly choose, or if our choices had no tangible consequences, then our actions would be without significance. As it is, we do choose, and there are consequences. Sometimes those consequences can be good, and sometimes bad. But they are real.
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