I know where I’ll be every Monday and Tuesday evening, and on Sunday mornings. And I know what I’ll be doing first thing every day. This is in stark contrast to a half dozen years ago. Then, the only thing you could count on from me was that I’d probably be alone in my apartment, though I probably wouldn’t answer the phone. I had no regular weekly commitments. Not a one. When I was invited to social events, I didn’t RSVP; I’d just show up or not — that ... Continue reading What Works: Nonnegotiables]]>

I know where I’ll be every Monday and Tuesday evening, and on Sunday mornings. And I know what I’ll be doing first thing every day. This is in stark contrast to a half dozen years ago. Then, the only thing you could count on from me was that I’d probably be alone in my apartment, though I probably wouldn’t answer the phone. I had no regular weekly commitments. Not a one. When I was invited to social events, I didn’t RSVP; I’d just show up or not — that way I could decide at the last minute. My decision was usually no. This change happened gradually, but it is the result of two large events — renewed sobriety and a radical deepening of my spiritual life — and one simple tool that I learned along the way: making commitments nonnegotiable.

Being unwaveringly faithful to commitments is seen today as quaint, almost anachronistic. Obedience and discipline are not very popular words. I want you to consider increasing the number of commitments in your life. Having nonnegotiable appointments gives life structure, gives you comfort, reduces anxiety, raises the esteem in which you’re held, and simply makes life easier to manage. It also guarantees you do some things that are good for you that might not otherwise get done.

Our society tells us we can have, and should want to have, whatever we want whenever we want it. We’re told that “The Man” — our boss, parents, religion, government — wants to limit us, and that the true American spirit, the true “modern” spirit, is “free.” We might nominally remain members of families, companies, communities and religions, but don’t tell us we have to do something we don’t agree with or we shed those obligations in a flash.

But that rugged-individualist freedom is an illusion. It exists in denial of the fact that there are trade-offs when choices are made, that we can’t just do whatever we want whenever we want without consequences. We want no commitments and no consequences. But as Scott Peck says in The Road Less Travelled:

Balancing is a discipline precisely because the act of giving something up is painful.

We all struggle with commitments — going to the gym, our diet, meditating daily, staying sober. We did them all faithfully at first. Some we abandoned in weeks or months. Others we continue, but feel as if we’re fighting ourselves to do the right thing.

Getting started with nonnegotiables:

• Sit down with a piece of paper and make a list of regular appointments that are already, or could be, nonnegotiable — such as a religious service, meditation, recovery meetings, regular cultural activity, some kind of spiritual group.
• For each one, ask yourself: “Is this important enough to me that I am willing to commit to making this a nonnegotiable event in my life, to do it every time, whether I feel like it or not, to simply not consider any other events that conflict with it?”
• Looking at those you’ve answered ‘yes’ to above, ask yourself if the total is a realistic goal, or just wishful thinking. Use your own discretion but I suggest committing in this way to no more than four to six items.
• If you keep a paper or computer-based calendar, place these items in the calendar. (In my column on task management, I describe coding my calendar as things that are nonnegotiable commitments, and things that aren’t.)
• Now, for at least the next 40 days, treat these calendar items and any daily commitments you’ve made such as morning meditation, as nonnegotiable. If something “better” comes along, simply say you’re unavailable. If you don’t feel like doing it, do it anyway.
• If you find yourself struggling with this process in general or with one specific item on the list, pray to better know the fruits of the Holy Spirit of self-control and faithfulness to aid you in fulfilling your commitment. (This is not for a lifetime; you can spend 40 days getting used to the new pattern before making any decisions.)
• After 40 days, reevaluate whether you may have mislabeled one or more of these commitments. The point here is not to be rigid. The point is to not treat these appointments as if they’re negotiable every time.
• Enjoy being comforted and fortified by your routine. Earn esteem by being consistent. Be freed of the anxiety of deciding week after week whether to do these things, and of the guilt you would have felt if you’d skipped them. And get some good things done.

Other What Works columns referenced:

• Freedom From Choice
• Being On Time
• Your Internal Compass
• Meditation

I’ve often said that in my recovery, I used to have one foot out the door in my head. I was there, but I wasn’t really a member of the club. I might have looked like I was fully committed, but on a deeper level I knew it was provisional for me. That’s why many well-meaning New Year’s resolutions fail. The commitment isn’t really that deep.

Making things nonnegotiable

Don’t audit life. I want to encourage you to make a few things nonnegotiable — things that take some willingness and effort and have benefits that aren’t instant. I’ll give you a few examples:

• Daily prayer and meditation — it’s so easy to check email or turn on the TV and blow right past that moment of willingness first thing.
• Religious service every week — we know once we get there we’ll see friends and be inspired, but to leave the house can seem almost insurmountable.
• A weekly spiritually enriching group — meditation class, yoga, Bible study: pick something you want to do, but don’t manage to fit in consistently.
• A culturally enriching activity — in The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron prescribes preplanned artist dates with yourself — two hours a week for a museum, show, hike in nature, stroll and dinner in a new neighborhood. Consider buying the subscription, not just individual tickets, to a local classical concert series.
• If you are in recovery, don’t just drop in at various meetings; choose a “home group,” get a commitment there, show up early every week and starting planting roots.

A friend said to me the other day, when I mentioned I’d be writing about making things nonnegotiable, “Yes, well the hard part is deciding to make something nonnegotiable.” That’s right. It should be a difficult decision. I’m not saying you should do it lightly. You don’t want to commit to something that isn’t that important to you. Or overcommit at a level that’s stressful or unsustainable.

In our age of instant gratification and rebellion against authority, our first reaction can be a childish internal whine of, “Do I have to?” The crazy thing (and I use that word advisedly) is that we know it is good for us — we know that we will be happier in the long run if we do it. So, how do we make ourselves do it now, for that future benefit?

The antidote is simple

The answer, to use Scott Peck’s word, is discipline.

I’m not talking about self-righteously living a tightly controlled life —  “an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety” (Colossians 2:23) — no, I’m talking about the maturity to discern and follow our internal compass, relying on the fruits of the Holy Spirit of self-control and faithfulness (Galatians 5:22-23).

When we avoid committing ourselves to things, we end up with too much freedom . So the antidote is surprisingly simple: take away some of our own freedom. Making a few things nonnegotiable with guidance from the Holy Spirit, rooted in an authentic willingness, is totally different from begrudging obedience to an external rule. When the moment of action comes, there is no internal debate, feeling oppressed or procrastinating till it’s too late. We just do it.

That willingness can falter, of course. A few summers ago, I embraced the lax summer vibe at my parish and took the “nonnegotiable” status off morning mass. Then sometimes an event would conflict with evening mass and I’d say, well, I’ll catch a mass during the week… and forget. Next thing I knew, I realized in shock that I hadn’t been to mass in a month. Within weeks, my impulses had sidelined a key part of my spiritual life. We need structure from our faith community and support from the Holy Spirit. We can’t do this alone.

I have several nonnegotiables in my weekly routine, blocked out on my calendar. Barring a genuine and extremely important conflict, no matter what “better” offer comes along, whether I feel like it or not, whether I feel well or not — unless I’m contagious or really too sick to get out of bed — I am there. (Some people have jobs that require them to shift their schedules around, and I understand that, though I’m not sure I would accept such a job.)

This structure, this discipline, frames my week. I know where I’ll be on those days. And people can count on my being there. It creates consistency, which is an estimable trait. It’s hard to explain why the experience of consistency is so good. It’s a somewhat mystical phenomenon. The simple experiential truth for me is that the way I used to live — treating all commitments as provisional, not wanting people to count on me so I wouldn’t let them down — was disconnected, adrift. Now, being in the same places and seeing the same people each week, with a variety of commitments for which others can count on me, is comforting and fortifying. It grounds me in my faith community, my wider world, and God.

I encourage you to try the suggestions in the sidebar on the right. Have you struggled with maintaining nonnegotiables in your life? Have you experienced feeling fortified by them? Share your thoughts, opinions and experience below in a comment, or by email at phil AT bustedhalo DOT com .

I was on a retreat this weekend, and do you know what one of the little pleasures was for me? Coming to the dining room at mealtimes and being presented with a single option — simply accepting what is offered. Why is this lack of choice a comforting treat rather than an annoying limitation? Because having to choose from dozens of options — having to decide what to do every minute of the day — can be exhausting, and stressful. And, like the dinner menu, many of the decisions ... Continue reading What Works: Freedom From Choice]]>

I was on a retreat this weekend, and do you know what one of the little pleasures was for me? Coming to the dining room at mealtimes and being presented with a single option — simply accepting what is offered. Why is this lack of choice a comforting treat rather than an annoying limitation? Because having to choose from dozens of options — having to decide what to do every minute of the day — can be exhausting, and stressful. And, like the dinner menu, many of the decisions we face every day are entirely unimportant.

I live in New York City. More than any other single place on this planet, perhaps, it offers lots of options. This can be exhilarating, but it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. On any given night, there are a dozen amazing events I could attend. On any given day, there are a dozen things I could do to advance toward my goals.

Now, though, thanks to technologies that open up the entire world to us through our cell phone, cable TV and laptop, this characteristic of New York City is becoming more prevalent for everyone, everywhere.

Getting things done

Task management guru David Allen devotes a lot of his attention to the issue of choice. As he sees it, one of the biggest obstacles to getting things done occurs in that moment when we have to decide what to do next. Allen says that often it’s much more efficient to just do something reasonable rather than spend time deciding what to do. His approach, dubbed “Getting Things Done” or GTD, can be overly fussy, but it has a lot of useful techniques.

Free yourself from choices

1. Try this: Identify what tasks can be done in a certain setting, then do the first item on the list. Don’t think about things that can’t be done there, then; and don’t worry about prioritizing the things that can be done. Just do something.

2. The next time you find yourself trying to choose between several comparably useful things to do, just pick one and do it.

3. Consider getting or taking advantage of a reliable system to capture decisions about tasks and events, so that once you’ve made a decision about a future event you can record that decision and forget about it. This can only work if you trust the way you record it. Scraps of paper and notepads that will likely be lost are useless. There is specialized software, and I may find an application I like, but my iPhone’s calendar and notepad do a great job.

4. Consider my approach to revamping an appointment calendar that I describe in this column: either record only definite events, or if you include other things, make a very clear, instantly readable distinction between definite appointments and everything else, so you can see if there’s anything you need to do at a glance.

Use whatever tricks you can find that work for you to help identify and track:

• the tasks that need to be done
• what can be done where and when.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done and the related materials at davidco.com have tons of tips and methodologies. Some are overly fussy, but there is a wealth of useful information.

To oversimplify, its key feature is preparing in advance so you know what needs to be done and can be done in different settings and at different times; then, depending on where you are or what you’re working on, it’s easy to identify what you could be doing, and you just do the next thing on that list. You don’t waste time deciding what to do. You don’t even complicate your lists with the kind of priority coding used in most task management systems. You just do one of the things that needs to be done. Over time, you get everything done and you don’t waste a lot of time deciding the order.

People who don’t fret so much over unimportant choices are more confident and productive. I can’t help remembering an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when Captain Picard and Beverly Crusher have temporarily gained the ability to see each other’s thoughts. When they come to a fork in the path, and the captain picks a route, Crusher discovers that her leader often makes choices without really knowing which is better. If they stopped and debated which way to go, they would have gained little if anything and wasted potentially precious time. So he just picked a direction.

Even if you don’t become a GTD zealot with software and file cabinets and labelers, this one nugget can change your whole relationship to deciding what to do: If you find yourself trying to choose between several comparably useful things to do, just pick one and do it.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about rushing through decisions here. In my last column, I talked about the value and importance of discernment. Here, I’m referring to things you’ve already decided to do. The question is which, and when. And the answer, often, is any of them, and now.

Set it and forget it

The problem, according to Allen, is that the modern connected person has tons of what he calls “open loops” — uncompleted tasks and undecided priorities — that their brain must keep track of, or experience anxiety over the risk of losing track of. Many of his techniques involve removing unimportant choices, or making them once and moving on, so that our lives become simpler.

My favorite example of Allen’s simple genius is his story of how, if we need to remember to bring a file to work tomorrow, we might prop the file up against the front door. If you see the logic behind this “trick,” his systems are just fancier methods to the same end. But many of us, and I count myself in this camp, would tend to think the file-at-door trick is stupid, go to bed planning to remember the file in the morning, forget it, and then be furious with ourselves for forgetting. We insist on doing everything without any help — even from systems we create. It is a point of pride to manage our insanely complex life — it can even feed into our sense of self-importance that we have such a complex life.

Managing your calendar

Back to all those wonderful New York events. When I switched from my Filofax to an iPhone a few years ago, I relished the calendar’s ability to keep track of all my options. Before I knew it I had 12 calendar categories, from work appointments to friends’ concerts, from brunch dates to options for Mass. Every time I learned of an event I had any interest in, I’d add it.

As an example, let’s take an actual night from last week. With last year’s method, I’d be looking at four overlapping vertical blocks — red for a friend’s dinner party; green for a usual weekly group event; orange for a friend’s show at a local club; and blue for an optional work-related conference call. I would have reviewed this mess several times in the preceding days, reminding myself of my priorities and redeciding whether to stick with them or change them.

Rereading Allen’s Getting Things Done last year, I got to a part about calendars. People want to add things they’d “really like to” do but which are not essential, says Allen:

“Resist this temptation. You need to trust your calendar as sacred territory, reflecting the exact hard edges of your day’s commitments, which should be noticeable at a glance while you’re on the run. That’ll be much easier if the only things in there are those that you absolutely have to get done on that day.”

And as I read this passage I realized my error — with all my categories I was missing the key one: Is this something I am committed to doing? On the run, that’s the only categorization that matters.

Simplify and streamline

So I added a “definite” category in a solid dark color and got rid of all others but two: events and stuff with friends. If I glance at my calendar and there’s something definite, my decision is already made. Done. Go do it. If not, then I can choose, free of anxiety, to do nothing or to pick something from the optional stuff. I know there’s no right or wrong answer.

For that night last week, the dinner party was “definite.” I knew that when I made the date a month ago, and coded it that way. (See also, in my column on honesty, about the value of honoring commitments.) So, looking at my calendar, I knew at a glance what to do and I was free from anxiety.

Look for opportunities in work projects, your appointment calendar, bill payment, and anything else that needs keeping track of, to simplify and to make decisions once and forget them. The nagging unfinished processes can feel overwhelming and add a lot of anxiety to your life, making it harder to maintain a sense of acceptance and peace.

Have you worked with GTD or another task management approach, struggled with managing your tasks and appointments, experienced the strain of an over-committed life? Leave a comment below or email me at phil AT bustedhalo.com.