How to Manage Time When You Don't Have a Job

I love How to With John Wilson. The recent S2E6: How to Be Spontaneous episode was a particular favourite. In the episode, John Wilson is torn between the fear of committing to a schedule (opportunity cost: spontaneity) vs. the aspirational ideal of making plans (opportunity cost: time wasted dicking about).

After groaning "oh noooo, it's us" a few million times, it got me thinking about my own relationship with time/plans, too.

Free time is frightening as fuck

In a job, your day is pretty much all planned out.

You open Gmail and Slack at 10am, reply messages, deal with things, do routine tasks until lunch. You take a long lunch break and try to enjoy it — as much as enjoyment is possible with one eye on your phone for Slack notifications. Then you do some calls and maybe work on some pointless shit until 5pm, the socially accepted time to sneak off and chop onions for dinner.

So when I said goodbye to this routine, I pretty much lost my mind.

I know, I know… Most people leave their jobs because they want more free time. Not me, though. I was deathly afraid of the void.

Without a routine or to-do list, I was overwhelmed by possibilities. Am I going to correct all the typos on my website today? Or should I go to the beach? No, it looks like rain, so maybe I should chop onions for stew instead? Maybe I'll go clean the bunny playpen before my hands get onion-y?

This quickly devolved into unhelpful self-talk: I should be making the most of unemployment! But what if I run out of time to do all my work? What if I run out of money?? Gollum, Gollum!

Be honest about what’s actually important

I actually have a million things to do even though I’m no longer employed. Maybe even more things than when I was working, because “now I have the time.”

My mistake was neglecting to schedule my tasks. Wanting to keep my schedule open (cf. John Wilson), I didn’t allocate fixed time frames for certain tasks or address certain needs. So when I wasn’t frowning at the sky trying to decide if it’d rain, I often ended up busy with things that weren’t actually important to me.

Recently, I made myself sit down and decide on my Important Things:

• Personal writing (journal + this blog)

• Taking care of pets

• Spending time with Jon

• Taking care of self (cooking + exercise)

The Not-So-Important Things are:

• Freelance writing

• Food rescue

• Olio-ing

• Other activities like going to the beach

Having free time is not the same as having infinite time. I have to define the structure of my days according to my priorities. Without structure, days burn up faster than hell money during 7th month.

The other problem: not getting out much

If I’m not careful I’ll turn into my dad. Apart from brief outings to buy lunch and doing callisthenics at the fitness corner, he only properly “goes out” once a week. Like me, he isn’t very sociable. It’s a vicious circle: we get confused and irritated by The Ways of Men, so we avoid them like mad; the lack of contact makes us even more confused and irritated, we go to greater lengths to avoid them… etc.

Before I left my job, my social life was already dismal. My meagre workplace interactions constituted the bulk of my social life. Now that Slack and Google Hangouts have vanished from my life, there are many days where I don’t have meaningful interactions with anyone apart from Jon.

I know I should meet people more. But I’m also afraid of exhaustion, so it has to be carefully scheduled (once a week is good). I’m trying to set a rotation of friend hangouts as well as opportunities to meet new people (e.g. Meetups).

The other thing that might be socially fulfilling for an unemployed person like me is to hang out in what’s known as a “third place”.

Third places, coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, are places other than work and home where you can just “be in the world”. Think sitting in the park or library or town square. Even though being part of society is a key feature of hanging out in a third place, social interaction can be kept quite minimal, so it’s not as draining as meeting people.

Everything I did this week

• Monday: bike ride, Bánh Mì Saigon

• Tuesday: exploring Yishun, bike ride

• Wednesday: bike ride, housework, groceries

• Thursday: Atas Kebab & Decathlon outing with dad

• Friday: swim, food rescue

• Saturday: BEACH!

• Sunday: Sushiro & errands, food rescue

As you can see I’ve been eating out a lot… 3x this week! I don’t know. Just no mood to cook anything.

I think my favourite day was going to the beach yesterday with Van. I got up at 7am — way earlier than the usual time — and this simple change was enough to make the day feel like a holiday. And all those extra hours! By 10am we were soaking up the sun; by 1pm we were done and ready to drift home slowly, just as the crowds were rushing in and the rain started.