A Dreamy Schedule
Posts for the last few days have had a lot to do with one of the Amplifiers of Yeah I listed in an earlier article (Amplifiers of…Well, Yeah), none of which I went into much detail about. Recent articles have centered around themes related to developing Psychological Freedom.
I have also brought up Time Freedom, another one of the amplifiers, and I want to return to it today.
As a bit of an aside, at some point I will go into more detail on each of these amplifiers. But I like to keep these posts below 1,000 words if I can, so…it may take a while. I’ll get there.
Just as with the last few posts, I likely won’t always connect the dots directly (“this article is about this amplifier,” etc.). We’re on a winding Highway to Yeah, and that is part of the adventure.
With that preamble, let me get to the heart of today’s post.
Time freedom creates a cup you can then leave empty.
Or, you can fill it with things to do.
Even if you leave it empty, that is something to do, too.
I like this idea. It’s very Tao. It is sort of the idea of boredom propelling you to action.
Here’s the catch for me personally, though.
I can go 100 different directions.
And that may be okay, but I have a burning desire to live a radically designed lifestyle of meaning, joy, service (of some sort), and a lot of Yeahs. It seems to me that a more structured day is often a better-used day, and I think my experiences this past week revealed that in how I used my time.
A wonderful—or dreamy—daily schedule has been a sort of Holy Grail for me all my life, but particularly after achieving FIRE.
It’s one reason the life of a monk has always appealed to me.
You might split your day into thirds. One part for work to sustain your life, your colleagues, and the monastery. One part for prayer and devotion. One part for service to the community.
For another example, a YouTube sensation by the name of Ali Abdaal (a former medical doctor from the UK who is now a productivity specialist) had a podcast episode I watched and took notes on last year. I came across those notes again right before the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference in Ashland, Oregon.
He described his perfect day as consisting of four parts:
He writes his content.
He records it.
He works out.
In the evening, he gets together socially.
That’s pretty straightforward.
It comes back to his One Things—or what I have called One Hit Wonders:
His YouTube channel, team, and operations.
His health and fitness.
His relationships.
However, I have yet to find a schedule that works for me.
It seems I am always trying to implement some version of one, only to abandon it later.
This is why I think I have turned to One Hit Wonder commitments.
Instead of trying to predefine the day and how it will unfold, I am simply putting the Big Rocks in.
And they are Big Rocks because of my passionate commitment to seeing them happen regularly—daily at first—as I build sustainable habits around them.
How long must they remain daily?
I don’t know.
Research is varied on this.
You’ll often hear 60–90 days.
I asked an artificial intelligence platform about this because I was wondering what constituted two standard deviations from the mean. That is, if 90 days is the average, then what is the upper-tail limit where approximately 95% of a random population would likely have established the habit?
What I was told was that you can’t really apply standard deviations to these kinds of studies.
However, it did say that in the most extreme cases, it can take more than 250 days to establish a habit.
As a heuristic (i.e., a rule of thumb), the kindly AI assistant also suggested that around 165–170 days is probably where 95% or more of people who are going to establish a habit have done so in a way that is likely to stick.
Regardless, let me come back to the Dreamy Schedule point.
While I was in Ashland, I followed this basic schedule each full day:
Awake around 4:30 a.m.
Water, coffee, a little YouTube, maybe a game on the phone—but only until about 5:15.
Draft blog article, edit it, post it with a visual.
Around 6:30 a.m., walk to get a coffee. Get steps in. Get better caffeine than the hotel crap.
7:15 a.m., shower and get ready.
8:00 a.m., dream circle group meeting. In person. What a joy. Nothing better than IRL.
Breaks, chats, beverages, pit stops.
9:15 a.m., first session—choice of 4–6 workshops or lectures.
Break.
11:00 a.m., second session—again, either a workshop or lecture.
12:30 p.m., lunch break.
I used this time to rehearse songs I plan to play at open mics this summer.
Sometimes there was also a “salon” event in the hospitality suite. One of the featured presenters would meet with a group of 10–15 people for a more intimate discussion about their research and presentation topics.
I attended three of these.
Great stuff… and into the Afternoon…
2:30 p.m., third session.
4:00 p.m., fourth session or keynote presentation.
5:30 p.m., dinner and personal tasks.
8:00 p.m., social event of some type.
I skipped Tuesday’s social event for a few reasons—it was a tough day, which I wrote about.
Otherwise, I pretty much plugged into everything that was offered, often wishing I could be in two places at once like Hermione Granger.
A real Hogwarts kind of experience.
What does that schedule look like to you?
If you answered, “the schedule of someone designing a Back on Campus radical lifestyle,” you win the gold star.
And where does the schedule of a Traveling Minstrel fit into all this?
Yesterday, I drove from 10:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. to get back home.
At about 5:45 p.m., I passed a town where I knew there was an open mic—about an hour from my house.
I would have arrived right in time for sign-ups.
I had my guitar with me.
I was presentable.
But did I stop to see if I could play?
No.
How do I feel about that?
Okay.
But it is part two of this post, and I will unpack it further, I assure you.
Nevertheless, this morning I watched a YouTube video by a new acquaintance—and hopefully a friend over time—whom I met at the conference.
It reminded me how much I liked this structure.
It was dreamy.
(Link Included here, if I can figure out how to do this in Squarespace…)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tFr-zVe4EkY&ra=m
And Guesss What I am doing today?
Arise at 4:30 a.m.
Coffee.
A little YouTube.
A game on the phone.
Draft blog article.
And then, a walk.
But after that…
Oh boy.
There is stuff to do.
But…
What do I want to do with all that free time?
Not what do I need to do.
What do I really want to do?
And will I do it?
Time freedom is a huge responsibility, and it’s not for the faint of heart, I can tell you that.