How (should) I spend my Time

Most days I ask myself many times per hour if what I am doing matters. I can’t remember how often I thought about the usefulness of my actions throughout the day before brain cancer. It was fairly often, I am sure, but it wasn’t nearly as often as it is now.

Having a disease that is guaranteed to shorten my life drives my increased focus on whether I am being productive. Maybe that’s okay, but one of the challenges is creating a rubric for determining what is a productive use of time and what matters. Without set criteria for assessing my actions, I can be undisciplined with my time and the days can become unnecessarily stressful. Before sharing more about that, I think it’s helpful to provide additional context.

Constantly Reminded of my Mortality

I described my prognosis in other posts, but the way I think about the outlook is metaphoric. I have always been moving closer to death with every second I am alive, but I assumed I had a good chance of living a normal lifespan, maybe 70-80 years. Soon after receiving my prognosis in 2019, I started thinking about my life like a lit fuse. It’s always been burning and will to the end. Before brain cancer I assumed I had a lot of fuse left, at least as much as any relatively healthy person. Learning of my prognosis was like someone coming in and saying “Hey, your fuse has been shortened. We can’t tell you how much shorter it is now, but probably a lot.” I started assessing the use of my time under the backdrop of thinking about my life as a lit fuse that’s shorter than I always thought and wanted it to be.

I've shared my thought process and this struggle with others. A few people responded with something like “you know any of us could go any minute.” This feedback is well-intended, and honestly, as a general matter I like that perspective. I think it’s great advice for how to live, and it of course applies to me. However, my situation is still very different. The go-at-any-minute perspective just doesn’t fully address it. My brain cancer will be the cause of my passing unless something else takes me first. There’s really no uncertainty about that. Learning that at 33 changed things. And what makes it more real and difficult is science provides predictions about how long I have. So things are just different, and I know that from first hand experience. I rarely if ever thought about my mortality before learning my prognosis. Now I think about it every single day.

What I am Working On

The challenge is living every day without feeling anxious about whether I am spending my time in the best possible way. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how I even make that determination. What’s most important? How should I prioritize? How can I be more disciplined with my time? These are all questions I focus on a lot.

Here’s where I am:

• What I want my priorities to be seems straightforward most of the time. Family, health, work, friends, being useful to others, are all at the top of the list. I am not saying I make these my priorities every day; these are just the people and actions I think I should care most about.

• One way to gauge whether I am allocating my time well is by paying close attention to how things are going for the people around me. I have to connect with our kids, Megan, my mom, my boss, etc. and try to understand how they’re doing. If they are struggling significantly in some way, I reflect on whether I have been there for them recently. It’s possible that I have, and the issues they are facing are not something I can help with. But often it’s worked out that when someone close to me is struggling, I have been neglecting my relationships or commitments to them, and there is clearly more I can do.

• I haven’t stuck to this approach on a regular basis, but for a handful of weeks this year I sat down on Sunday night and wrote my priorities for the week on a notecard. I try to be very specific so I can evaluate myself throughout and at the end of the week. For example, I’ll write “play with Henry in his room at least two times,” or “spend at least 2 hours of 1:1 time with Abby.” It’s really helpful when I am disciplined enough to carry the notecard with me each day, even if it’s just in the front pocket of my backpack. This notecard approach is helpful because I start the week with a clear list of priorities, and I have extra motivation to be disciplined since I cannot stand an unfinished to-do list.

• Journaling is helpful. Last year I journaled maybe 3 or 4 times. I have around 40 entries this year. It’s obviously still not a daily ritual, but when I do it it’s helpful for defining or resetting my priorities and assessing my commitment. It’s also proven beneficial for working through issues that are clouding my thinking, like resentments and disappointments.

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• I am more cognizant of and am trying to break bad habits that are absolute wastes of time. My worst enemy is my phone. What amazes me is that even though on a daily basis I think of my life like a lit fuse, etc. I still sometimes waste hours scrolling through nonsense. I can be hard on myself after the fact. I'll scroll through social media for 30 minutes on the couch in the evening, and when I snap out of it realize I just wasted prime time with my family. Then the lit fuse metaphor and my prognosis pop into my mind. At that point I either do something about it or get down about my circumstances and wallow. I’ve tried a few things to address the bad habits. I’ve deleted my social media apps before but for one reason or another brought them back. What’s worked well when I have done it is using a dumb phone on the weekends. I bought a basic flip phone that uses the same SIM card as my iPhone. It’s unreal how freeing it is to use that flip phone. I just need to do it more often.

Thanks for reading.

Nick