Planting Seeds and Claiming Time

When you realize that there is only one person who will ever give you the time you need.

Welcome to Making Time. Each week, I share thoughts and ideas for making more time for yourself by building creative energy and establishing rituals and practices. This year, I’m also attempting The 2024 Slowdown, which you can do with me. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe for free.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

The sun is pouring in through the windows slant-wise this morning, casting long morning shadows all over the house. We have that mixture of sunshine and snow today that illuminates everything with cool, bright winter light.

In spite of the snow on the ground, I’m in the process of starting seeds for the season, laying the foundation for the summer garden. I often think summer and winter are like living in two different worlds. It can be hard to imagine the heat and sweat of working in the garden in August, but starting now will yield much more to eat when harvest time rolls around.

I wrote recently about my winter rituals, but I’ve recently added something back into my morning routine: an hour of writing.

I’ve tried to include writing in my morning routines many times in the past, to varying degrees of success. Last year, I vowed to get up early every day and begin writing immediately, for at least 90 minutes. This turned out to be far too taxing and difficult, and when I realized how hard I was pushing myself, I gave up.

So what’s different this time? I’m giving myself a little more slack. I’m waking up early, but not much earlier than I usually do. I give myself about half an hour to drink coffee, read, and wake up. Then I light a honey-colored candle at the dining table, grab my laptop, and write. This time, it’s actually enjoyable.

In his book Rest, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang argues that starting your day early is a key to a more restful life. He argues that we are never simply given time to rest by the outside world, that we have to claim it for ourselves. “The early start makes room in the day for rest. It gives us the right to rest. It can also boost your creativity during those working hours and prime your subconscious mind to keep working even when you turn your attention to other things.”

I found the idea of claiming time to be particularly compelling. He’s right. If we sit around waiting for someone else to give permission to meet our own needs, it won’t happen. Time is something we have to claim and organize for ourselves.

This convinced me to give morning writing another go, but at a pace I can handle.

Planting Creative Seeds

This brings me to this month’s Slowdown practice: planting those little creative seeds each day.

Another suggestion Alex Soojung-Kim Pang makes is to prepare for your creative tasks the night before. He describes his own process of setting up coffee ahead of time, outlining the next morning’s writing, setting out clothes, and queuing up music for the next day.

Another suggestion I’ve heard: Whatever your creative task for the morning, start step 1 the night before. Take one tiny step forward in advance, so that you can dive in immediately, because getting started is often the hardest part

So that’s my practice for this month: do 1-3 small steps to set myself up for a morning of creative work.

For me, this will be setting out my laptop, and making a 1-sentence note about what to work on. That’s it. I can layer in other steps (like choosing some music or outlining more fully) if I find them helpful, but I’m starting very simply.

What do you think? Do you have anything creative you do in the mornings? Or is there something you’d like to start? I’d love to hear about it.

Last Month’s Practice: A Mindful Moment

I didn’t have a chance to write yet about February’s Slowdown practice, finding a mindful moment in your day.

My particular practice was to eat an undistracted breakfast, without multi-tasking, reading, scrolling, or even music. I simply sat for the 10-15 minutes it takes to eat my oatmeal and enjoyed what I was doing.

Recently, David Cain wrote about small actions that seem to have outsize results compared to the effort they take. A quiet breakfast seems to be one of these pieces of low hanging fruit in my life.

Mornings can sometimes feel a bit hectic as I prepare for work, run a daily meeting, take care of all the animals, plan my day, put out fires, and finally try to get something to eat. It’s usually at about this point that I realize I have far more I’d like to get done that day than is possible, and the temptation is to go faster.

My brain in the morning

My brain after 15 minutes of quiet

Committing to a quiet breakfast forces me to question that reaction. It feels counter-intuitive in the moment, but doing less for just 15 minutes seems to signal to my brain that there’s nothing to panic about, that oatmeal is delicious, and that life is, in fact, quite wonderful.

I’d love to hear from you if you took a quiet moment with me this month, or even just any times you’ve let yourself intentionally slow down like this lately.

Thanks for reading Making Time. If you’re new here, you can subscribe for free to receive new posts each week. And don’t forget to join me in The 2024 Slowdown this year.