Examining Commitments, Spoken and Unspoken

Posted on April 29, 2009 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Life Design,Open Loops,Productivity,Review,Simplification

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Photo by Kapungo When it boils down to it, being productive is about managing our commitments. Everything that we do requires us to commit to it on some level. Even taking out the trash is a commitment, since we commit our bodies to moving a bag from place to place.

Spoken Or Acknowledged Commitments

Most of the things that make it into our lists are spoken commitments. We have said to someone that we are going to do something. Perhaps it is in response to someone’s request, or even a commitment to ourselves that we will complete something.

Unspoken or Unacknowledged Commitments

Unspoken commitments come about as parts of our lives that we may not consider as taking time. Household tasks, family time, and children’s activities are three examples.

For instance, having my daughter take piano lessons means that I have to commit to taking her to the lesson, waiting for the lesson to be done, help her work through the music, and listen to her practice. It’s not something that I put on my schedule, but it takes up three hours a week.

Many people, especially working parents, wonder why they have so little time. I think the reason may lie in unspoken commitments.

How To Find Unspoken Commitments

I went through my schedule looking for the unspoken commitments. I found, in addition to piano, that there were other ones:

Housework. I don’t schedule time for housework, and even doing little-and-often using a version of Flylady’s system, I still put in at least 30 minutes a day.
Exercise. This often falls off my list because it is something I need to do, yet don’t allocate time for.
Church. I go to church not only for my own benefit, but also so my daughter can attend religious education. This means I have to commit to getting out of bed on Sundays and making it to service. The total time is about 2.5 hours a week.
Food Prep. Just like housework, I don’t schedule time for food prep. I do most of the cooking in the house, as well as preparing lunches and some breakfasts. I estimate that this takes about 30 minutes a day as well.
Walking the Dog. I don’t necessarily plan to walk the dog. Our beagle, though, needs lots of exercise and “sniffing time”. A two mile circuit with the dog takes about 30 minutes a day.

This is not the complete list of commitments from the exercise, but it illustrates some of the things I found. I have many more commitments than what is actually on my project lists!

Balancing Unspoken Commitments and Your Life

By listing out the things that really are taking time in my life, I was able to see why I really don’t have all that much free time. That allowed me to re-examine everything and see if I could free up time for relaxation. I found that many of the projects that I was supposedly trying to work on but hadn’t made progress on needed to be put on hold. I had to scale back what I was trying to do.

Photo by Kapungo