The Time Fairy

Stop being so hard on yourself. Instead, start noticing cycles, and how you spend your time currency

Entrepreneurs, healers, helpers, artists, hardworking people: if you’ve ever been hard on yourself about how you spend your time, wonder if you put in enough time on your work, harangue yourself for wasting time, lament there isn’t enough time in the day . . . this one’s for you.

Consider me the Time Fairy, here to change your hard-on-myself default perspective, with my magic wand.

I’m not here to grant you a 26-hour day, or to teach you how to step outside of linear time (although I’m working on that one, stay tuned).

But I am here to say, that unless you’re among the oh-let’s-imagine-5% of people who might actually be a bit lazy (and if you’re here trying to educate yourself about being an entrepreneur the odds are pretty high you’re not) then JUST. STOP. BEING. HARD. ON. YOURSELF.

I mean it: just stop. And this is the Time Fairy speaking, so you’d best take me seriously. I had better take MYSELF seriously.

Let’s first talk about cycles.

There are seasonal cycles. Where I am in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s really cold and dark in winter. The days are short. We are not meant to be running around in the cold and dark. Our ancient programming is to conserve energy. We are not meant to get our knickers in a knot about launching products and offers, when all of our cells are screaming ‘rest, go inward, contemplate, dream, imagine, rest.’ The Spring will bring the energy of the sun and the revival of that outward-facing impulse. Trust me, you’ll see.

There are diurnal, i.e. daily, cycles. Whether you are an early bird or a night owl, there are times of the day when you are meant to be productive, and times when you will crash, or need to rest. Most of us require sleep: more sleep than we are currently getting. Sleep literally, physically, cleans out your brain. It hits the reset button, and allows you to work creatively and efficiently. Sleep supports optimal conditions for your body to repair itself. It brings dreams which process information and offer insight and inspiration to our daily lives, and our work.

There are lunar cycles. Certain moon times are better for completing projects, gestating new ideas, or launching new things. For me, New Moon is better for sowing the seeds of the new, and the days leading up to Full Moon are the times to engage high energy tasks. (But I’m the Time Fairy today, not the Moon Goddess, so google it and see what works for you.)

There are human-made project cycles. Sometimes we are in the midst of a priority project that requires more attention, that asks for longer, more intense work hours and maybe the occasional all-nighter. But in the general daily routine, most humans stop being very productive after a certain number of work hours. We don’t necessarily get more done if we put in 14 hours rather than 10. ‘Hustle’ is an overrated, adrenaline-junkie myth. Working efficiently and effectively is where it’s at. And if we do have to work some long hours for good reason, our bodies will eventually demand balance. Either next week, or in 20 years. With your conscious cooperation, or not.

And now, let’s talk about how much damn work you do.

In the years since my partner and I went from having one business stream to having multiple business streams, I’ve had a simple practice of scheduling everything I do into my calendar.

I didn’t used to be a scheduler, other than for essential things like appointments or meetings or events. I found that facing a full-to-the-brim calendar of routine tasks every morning was visually overwhelming and unhelpful to my personality type. I had other ways of staying focused.

It started as an experiment to demonstrate—to myself—how I was actually spending my days. But I’ve had the practice for years, now.

All the tasks of the day: I put them in there. Creating content for my businesses. Marketing and bookkeeping. Events. Appointments. Music practice. Language study. Answering emails & catching up on social media. Shopping online. Walking to errands. Making dinners. Making lunch. Cleaning the house. Meditation workshops. Laundry.

I even schedule in my showers. And I color code according to categories, like personal, business, etc

Since days are organic things that sometimes unfold differently than expected, I have permission to move items around. And while it may sound weird: I also frequently schedule things after the fact, i.e. if tasks came up organically and weren’t in the schedule, i put them in there after they were completed. It’s a sort of check list of accomplishments.

What I found? Every week day looks pretty jam packed with colorful sections. The days that have blanks in them are days when I was unwell, or exhausted, or the one day a week our family takes as a Sabbath.

Results of the experiment, aka ‘Duh!’

The obvious conclusion is that the self-talk I had around not spending enough time on my businesses, or not using my time properly, or being lazy, pretty much shrivelled in the face of the hard, cold evidence presented by my calendar.

As healing-helping-creative entrepreneurs, we have all the tasks of working in our businesses, and the tasks of working on our businesses (admin, marketing, product development etc). We have self-care, education, eating well, sleeping enough, and mindfulness practice. We likely have families, or children, or elder care; and food prep and errands and taxi-ing everyone around.

We can upgrade the ways we work to be more efficient or effective. We can stop making excuses about tackling the things we are scared of. We can get better at saying ‘no’ to things that aren’t in our top 10 or top 5 priorities.

But we can also give ourselves some credit, and stop being hard on ourselves when the Thing doesn’t happen until a month later, or this day (and the next, and the next) gets hijacked by something unexpected, or the product isn’t ready to launch ‘on time.’

We can remember that things flow in cycles, and those cycles often have greater wisdom than us.

We can remember we are doing enough.

We can remember that we are enough without doing anything at all.

Time Fairy, over-and-out.

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