02 | You are More Than Your Schedule
02 | You are More Than Your Schedule
In this episode, I share three reasons why we get caught thinking that our schedule and identity are intertwined.
Our society praises overworking and over-committing. Our culture emphasizes productivity, and as a result, we connect our busyness with our worth. I argue that you matter just by being you. How busy your schedule is or your ability to meet a million commitments is irrelevant to your worth. Overvaluing a packed schedule leaves no room for spontaneity or fun. Instead, we lose our identity in an endless stream of activities and never allow ourselves to rest.
Remember, work is work. Whether your schedule is filled with commitments for a paid job or unpaid labor like housework, childcare, and volunteering, being busy is not a marker of your self-worth. You are inherently valuable. Constantly working and always giving your time to others is a cycle we all fall victim to. I challenge you to acknowledge your role and your relationship to your schedule. Everything you do is a choice. Prioritize boundaries for your wellness because you matter whether you meet the commitments on your schedule or not.
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Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing an Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy, and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast, we'll go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to episode two “You are More Than Your Schedule.” Hey y'all I'm a podcast listener too. For me, I typically listen to podcasts when I'm on a walk or commuting from home to my kids' school. As I plan out my podcasts, I take into consideration that you also may be doing something like making dinner or walking your dog. I'll always try to give you a sense of the structure of the episode so that you can place yourself in time and space while we're together. I share this because we are in the age of busyness, of multitasking, of blurred lines between work and home. You may not work for pay outside of the home, but find yourself always on and always available as the primary default parent in your household. There's the first shift, the second shift, and if you're a caregiver of babies, seniors, pets, or others with care needs, there may be even more shifts into the night.
Your days seem never ending and your schedule either acts as the anchor for it all or the measuring stick for what didn't quite get accomplished. In this episode, I'm going to share how our schedules have become central to our identities, but in essence are truly only a small part of who we are. A quick note, my clients are primarily women and those socialized as women growing up, however, this topic applies to us all. I speak from my perspective as a woman and as a mother. Yet feel free to switch out any appropriate pronoun or identity that fits you. I believe that housework and care tasks are work, so again, fit the term work to the ways that you spend your time and energy each day. Unpaid labor is equally as valuable as paid labor. It all takes time and bolstering the value you place on your time is central to my work as a feminist and as a coach. So to give you an overview of where we're heading in this episode, I'll share three reasons why each of us gets caught up thinking that our schedule and our identity are intertwined. I'll argue that we are perpetuating these myths to our own detriment.
I mentioned the first reason briefly earlier. American society in particular praises and promotes a culture of busyness. Second, your ability or inability to follow daily schedule says something about who you are as a person. Third, when you're always busy and always working, there's little room for spontaneity and fun. The roots of productivity culture run deep. They're directly tied to early European and American puritanical values, morality, and the dominant belief that idleness was sinful. Slavery solidified this narrative in our culture. In today's American society, those roots are reflected in overworking and over-committing. Free time has basically become non-existent. If you're not working, then you're thinking about work or you're chauffeuring children, or you're managing the schedules, the gear, and the activities of others, or you're volunteering your time, or perhaps you're performing emotional labor in service of those in your household. Each of these acts carries value.
However, collectively, they keep us always moving and never resting. My refrain when someone asked was always, “I'm good, but busy.” Good but busy. It was my way of saying, all is well and everyone's healthy, and the cycle is never ending. Busyness was at the core of my days. I had three young children all close in age with different interests and passions. I had chosen to stay at home with them that first decade, and I held the belief that because I was highly productive, I was doing a great job. I had bought into the larger cultural belief that trading my time in service of others, presiding over the PTA, running a girl scout troop, driving endless hours to soccer, dance, music lessons, as well as caring for my mother's needs was a marker of my self worth. I wanna pause here for a moment and state plainly, you are inherently worthy from the moment you're born.
Your value on this earth isn't to be questioned. Your life matters, period. You are not your schedule. One of the fundamental problems with getting caught up with tying your schedule to your self-worth is that it drives you to always be working and always be giving. It's a form of martyrdom. When you believe that what you do each day defines your worth, the cycle must continue towards an unknown destination. This is thought provoking and I invite you to sit with it for a little while. You may feel some resistance, and that's okay. With my clients, the first step we take is to simply acknowledge our role and relationship to our schedule. Everything you do or don't do each day is a choice. I had created my own cycle of busyness. Therefore, once I could see that I had created it, I was in a place to learn how to better set boundaries for my own wellness.
So I invite you to see your schedule as a creation that's separate from you. Yes, I understand that the pressures to follow it or meet the request on your time from others is great. You're receiving lots of messages from the larger society and maybe even your family, that busyness and productivity are identities you should aim for, but there are and can be nuances to this so-called norm. For this episode, I want to challenge you to see that you matter whether you execute the commitments on your schedule or not, you are worthy and lovable. Alright to recap, reason one is that we're living in a time and within a culture that tells us that the busier our schedule is the more morally superior we are. This is simply false. The second reason why we get caught up thinking that our schedule and personal identity is intertwined is that throughout youth we are taught that the ability or inability to follow our daily schedule says something about who we are.
Think for a moment about the messages you received growing up about time. My dad and I are quite similar in many ways. We both thrive in order. We pay attention to detail. We're more often than not on time. Sure, part of this may be nature. However, I think it's equally more about nurture. I can't speak specifically to his upbringing, but I received praise and positive reinforcement for being organized, writing neatly and legibly. Using my planner in school, remembering the small details of an interaction or an assignment, and having all of my materials together. I was told that to be early was to be on time. My environment encouraged me to be productive, to be organized, to manage my time. The executive functioning parts of my brain were supported in all these areas.
My background may resonate for some of you listening. For others, you may have received different even opposite messages about time and deficiency. Clients often come to me because they have deeply held beliefs about how disorganized, scattered or unproductive they are. These are powerful words and I help them untangle the stories they've been told to reach a more grounded truth. Listen now for the distance your brain puts between the words, “organized versus disorganized”, “focused versus scattered”, “productive versus unproductive”. Notice for you, which set of words seems dominant, I intentionally said, “versus.” This puts them at odds with one another. Putting them against one another is absolutely unhelpful. Each of us has been raised to see ourselves in relation to our schedule. It starts in school, if not earlier, and the layers continue to build as we age. When you're told or shamed for being always late, you begin to internalize that as part of who you are, unless of course you get curious about your mindset. So let's pause for a moment right here.
How has the way you were raised influenced how you think about time, about your schedule? I invite you to get curious. Direct your attention to the forces outside of yourself that have led you to believe that one way of being is better than the other. It's kind of bonkers. We need all kinds of thinkers in society. We need humans that see and feel time in a different way. Of course, you are always welcome to seek change and improvement or personal growth around your relationship with time, and you are not your schedule. You're a human with passions and interests and quirks and dreams. You are more than the roles you inhabit and the work that you do, and I am too, which is where fun comes into the picture. Reason three is when you use your schedule as a marker of productivity and personal success, you typically adhere to it so tightly that life's unpredictability becomes a problem.
Fun, play, pleasure and excitement are all necessary experiences. Your brain has an opportunity to expand and relax when something out of the ordinary takes place. When your schedule is overly regimented, there's little room for joy. In my early twenties, I worked seven days a week at three different jobs. I was in graduate school as an art history and African studies major. I studied, I worked retail. I volunteered at a local Baltimore Arts nonprofit and I commuted to DC one day a week to work at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum. Needless to say, my routine was strict. I was juggling multiple priorities and my brain needed to switch into multiple different roles. I had no room for fun or play, every single day was a workday. Now, I absolutely own that I chose this schedule.
Remember, take away one. I believed that sticking to the schedule and meeting my professional goals would move me closer to being an art curator, which was my goal at the time. Guess what? It wasn't sustainable. I missed seeing my partner. I needed sleep. I wanted a day off to do something different than the day after day after day. I know that you can relate in one or more ways in your life. Most of us desire more free time, more time with friends and family, more time to pursue a personal passion. Basically, each of us needs some type of playful experience in our lives for overall general wellness. Yet you actually have to consciously decide to make space in your schedule for fun. I know that this is a struggle for many. You may see the cycle or the hamster wheel even that your schedule creates, and this is where I invite you to make one small change. So look one week or even more ahead, find an open block on your schedule. Remind yourself that you are in control of every moment of your life.
Block off as much time as you see fit: 30 minutes or even three hours. Mark it as “fun time” or “free time.” Whatever sounds great to you. No need to decide what you'll do with that block of time. Just claim it as your own. Practice awareness as you move throughout your days, separating yourself and your identity from the blocks on your calendar. Then at that day and time, drive somewhere new. Try a new type of food. Pretend to be someone totally different than you are for an hour. Look at the world through a child's eyes. Schedules are guides, but they don't determine who you are, you do.
Again, thanks for being here. It means the world to me. In this podcast, we'll discuss many more concepts around time and how we value it. Some will be lighter and funnier. Some will be more action-based. Some will be more thought-provoking like this one. Eventually, I'll even have special guests. Join me next episode, where I'll share exactly what I mean by embracing an organized life and how it's possible for every human. Talk to y'all soon.
Outro: Hey y'all. I'd be honored if you'd take three minutes to leave a review of this podcast. Your time is precious and by leaving a review, A Pleasant Solution will reach more listeners and lives. I'd also love to hear your feedback and share your review on a future episode. Talk to y'all soon and remember, you are more organized than you think.
