It was with some alarm this week that I read about the rise of microscheduling. This is a strategy by which ultra-busy people can attempt to squeeze yet further value out of their day by breaking down their activities into 15 minute blocks.
These are the kind of people whose daily schedules regularly begin at 4 or 5am and finish at 10pm with barely a break to scratch themselves.
One person mentioned in this article (the vlogging sensation Casey Neistat) even has the words 'Work Harder’ tattooed on his arm and displayed in neon lettering above his desk.
That’s a bit much. I mean, there’s a difference between being driven and being certifiably insane.
And anyway, surely, part of the process of doing and creating is the valuable time spent not doing and not creating. The downtime when ideas are percolating and seeping through the layers of your unconscious.
When the lunatic, nudist poet William Blake saw the ‘world in a grain of sand’ I’m pretty sure he wasn’t doing it between meetings and in fifteen-minute segments.
It takes time and space to be creative, to come up with that killer concept or that perfectly crafted sentence.
Having every minute of each day accounted for, surely spells the death of true creativity.
Go for a walk. Look at a view.
Think about something else.
As an underachieving procrastinator, I can highly recommend it.
A 4.30am start and three-minute toilet breaks: are you ready for microscheduling?
