Setting the pace

Rhythms shape our lives. We’re surrounded by systems that have to coordinate with each other and this naturally leads to rhythms developing. In the productivity world, that hardly gets noticed.

A week ago Cal Newport interviewed a productivity coach about timeboxing and the problems clients face scheduling time. They talked about being too rigid, overplanning a day, and not recognizing neurological traps and capacity limits. But I noticed that most of those problems stem from not focusing on the rhythms that shape a person’s environment. The schedule meets reality and falls apart.

Rhythms can be found in the examples Cal discusses. One rigid scheduler hasn’t designed his schedule to match the rhythms of the world. Another person struggles to adjust to the off beat when events hit early or late. Someone else hasn’t protected their schedule enough and the rhythms of the people around her disrupt her own cadence.

Of course, rhythms tend to settle into place without anyone having to think about them explicitly. But if they do fall apart, it can often feel like a personal failure or lack of willpower.

Really though, we’ve fallen out-of-step with the rest of the world and just need to adjust our pace.