Considering space and time
Just because you have the time, doesn't mean you have the space
Mindset Mastery is a free monthly newsletter about the psychology of small business ownership for freelance creatives from me, Jenni Gritters. If you’d like to support my work, I invite you to become a paid subscriber for $5/ month! Paid subscribers receive monthly journaling prompts, along with other perks.
Welcome to a special mini series!
This week, I’m sharing three short newsletters with y’all to let you in on the curriculum for ADAPT, my new business coaching program for freelancers living with constraints. Registration for the program closes this Sunday, March 26th (my birthday!) at midnight PST.
I only have a few spots left in the live track, and I hope you’ll consider joining me. If this program isn’t right for you, please share it with a friend.
If you missed my first newsletter in the series, which is about accountability, check it out here!
Next up: Space vs time
I’m inhaling Jenny Odell’s new book, Saving Time, which is a brilliant, philosophical look at how we perceive time in our culture. (It’ll be on the recommended reading list for ADAPT!) While I read, I’ve been thinking about how there’s a big difference between time and space.
For the past three years, I’ve worked 15 hours per week while caring for my son and wading through the depths of another terrible pregnancy. I had 15 hours set aside to work each week. Those hours were time units — little containers, each containing 60 minutes. In traditional productivity management culture, these time units are seen as interchangeable and available in the same way every day. You can always fill them with work, or any other kind of task. (Or, gasp, you could fill them with rest!) Each week, the hours are the same. It’s your job to efficiently fit your work and other tasks into those hours.
But during many of those weeks, especially when I was sick with hyperemesis during my pregnancy, I found that I could no longer squeeze my work into the hours I had. Yes, I had the time. But what I did not have was the space to do anything challenging.
By space, I mean that I did not have the mental capacity needed to deal with anything complicated or emotionally fraught. I might have had 5 hours open to work on a given day, but I didn’t always have the energy, focus, or other reserves necessary to fill those hours “productively.” In other words, my time-units were not interchangeable and available in the same way every day. Productivity culture felt like it was failing me. My energy reserves were not predictable and the productivity “hacks” I had become so reliant on (time tracking! prioritization!) no longer worked.
What mattered more than time, for me, was space. If I wanted to tackle creative projects like this newsletter, or if I wanted to be able to show up in a present way for my coaching clients, my therapist suggested that I needed to create more mental space. Frankly, if I wanted to get any work done at all, I needed to look at what was taking up space first.
Here’s an example: In October 2022, I still had 15 hours (time units!) available each week to work. But I felt like I had absolutely no space. I felt like I was drowning. Here’s what was taking up my mental space at the time, in no particular order:
Finding a predictable, safe childcare situation for my infant daughter
Refilling our emergency savings account after months of draining it during maternity and paternity leave
Renovating our kitchen, where the dishwasher was on the edge of its life
Managing my panic attacks and insomnia (and finding a new psychiatrist)
Working with a physical therapist to alleviate my chronic shoulder and postpartum pelvic pain
Helping my toddler son adjust to preschool, which included nap potty training and transitioning him to a “big kid bed”
Connecting with my husband, who felt one million miles away mentally and was working long hours at a hospital that was undergoing intensive union negotiations
Overhauling my workload to match our family’s new financial needs
I might have had 15 hours on my schedule for work, but I didn’t have the space for… anything else. I could do very simple things, like review a toaster oven. But I wasn’t able to connect, show up, coach well, write from my heart, or deal with the complexities of business ownership because I was out of space. I was maxed.
In ADAPT, we’ll talk a lot about the difference between time and space. When we audit your business, we’re going to look at how much time you have, sure, because that’s somewhat helpful. But if you have a lot going on, I’m more interested in your space, your bandwidth, your energy reserves, and the things you’re carrying on your own shoulders related to health and caretaking. I know we don’t talk about space very often in a business context (because it’s not supposed to affect us, because work is separate from life!). But y’all, it matters. We must get you out of survival mode if you want to build something that serves you.
The goal of ADAPT is for you to get a clear sense of what’s going on in your life and business. And because you’ll be with a group of other people who are dealing with similar challenges, there will also be an element of permission. In ADAPT, you can be a human being! You can have stuff going on! We all do. When you have permission to exist in the season you’re in and adapt your business to those needs, your nervous system can rest for a moment. It’s a big deal.
If this resonates with you, ADAPT might be the right support system for this season. (And if you don’t have a lot of time or space — which I get! — you can take the course at a self-paced cadence.) I’ll also be offering another coaching group for mid-career freelancers this summer, where we’ll talk about these concepts.
If your time tracker isn’t quite reflecting your ability to get things done, you’re not alone. Different seasons require different paces. Let’s embrace the one we’re in rather than trying to contort ourselves into what we’re “supposed” to be.
xoxo,
Jenni
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach based in Central Oregon. I have two small children and I work part-time so I can spend a lot of time with them. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with non-linear business building and teaching people how to build successful businesses that support their human needs first. Check out my coaching offerings here and follow me on Twitter & Instagram!