Writing for The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman asks the question: “Can You Really Live One Day at a Time?” He examines the recommendations given in Paul Loomans’ book Time Surfing, and decries the calendar app as a “ticking time bomb”. As someone whose GCal has formed a guiding beacon in my college life since I started studying here three years ago, this hit a little close to home. And yet, my lack of ability to live one day at a time, a constant feeling that time is slipping away from me, is something I struggle with. I sit down in the library to work on an essay and find that three hours have passed with only 500 words to show for it. The tasks I set myself take double the time I have allocated for them so that I live each day constantly trying to catch up. I cram my schedule full of extracurriculars and work shifts so that in living each day, I’m really trying to live two, or even three, days at once. But is this just a natural consequence of being a student? Am I destined to spend my final year at university as I’ve spent my first three, constantly rushing around and missing the unique opportunities that being a college student grants you?
Rothman, through his examination of Loomans’ book, concludes that the most important thing to living one day at a time is to be in tune with what your body and mind need, completing tasks “when the spirit moves you, because you’ll do it more effectively”. He says that “external systems [such as calendars or to-do lists] often encourage us to ignore signs of inner disturbance or exhaustion”. I have more than once, even in the brief time I’ve been back at college so far, pushed through feelings of tiredness or hunger in order to get work done and found mysteriously that the work is taking longer and longer than I had expected. By ignoring my body in an attempt to be productive, I had in fact been counterproductive and finished up my work irritated and exhausted. It would be better, as Rothman suggests, to take a break sooner, to be in tune with what my body, mind and “spirit” need. However, this might sound well and good in week one or week two, but what about when it comes to week nine or week ten? What about when the deadlines start piling up and work must get done regardless of how you feel about it? The principle of letting the spirit move you may work for a life filled with self-directed tasks or assignments, but I struggle to see how it bends to accommodate deadlines set by external systems.
Who does not experience the pressure of the expectations of others, the requirements of a university or employer? However, in the spirit of attempting to fully find an answer to the question this article seeks to answer, I have attempted to be more guided by my needs and interests. When sitting down to do work, I take a moment to figure out what I will best be able to engage with in that moment. And, to my surprise, I have found myself more able to be present in the work that I’m doing. Crucially, however, a more important, and perhaps more manageable idea has stuck out to me. Removing the guilt and anxiety from deviating from a schedule or calendar has been the most helpful thing to me in being able to be more fully present.
Rothman also seems to suggest a life wherein your workload is manageable and schedules align with priorities, but often this is just not the reality for university students, or indeed for most people. There will always be modules you hate, projects you are wholly uninterested in, and in waiting until you feel like doing these tasks, it seems likely to me they’ll never get done. It seems characteristic of this period in my life to be constantly and overwhelmingly busy, and in previous years I haven’t been able to stop my mind from racing ahead because there was, truthfully, always something to do next, and a very real fear that some very important things would not get done. It is hard to dissuade this fear, to alleviate all guilt as I have suggested, when each item on the to-do list seems as important as the next, all of them needing to be done immediately.
Life, too, is not only composed of tasks and things to get done. Never again will we have this opportunity to be so frequently surrounded by our friends, perhaps to engage with this thing we’re really passionate about. I study English, and I don’t think there will ever be a time in my life after next year where whole chunks of my day are meant to be dedicated to reading, thinking, and writing about books. This too, though, is an added pressure. There have been many times when I’ve walked around campus in a daze of planning and scheduling only to have to shake myself back to the present, to appreciate that I’m actually here, studying at the university I worked so hard to get to. I force myself to feel gratitude and present-mindedness and frequently worry that I’m wasting this time away by being stressed.
This fear has compounded the closer that I’ve gotten to final year. I am all too aware that if I waste this time being worried and stressed, I won’t get it back. This time next year my friends and I will (hopefully!) be working full-time, or living abroad, or studying for a masters, and I don’t want to look back a year from now and feel like I’ve wasted this time being caught up in essays and readings I no longer remember. It will never be possible, I imagine, to fully detach one moment from the next, to avoid continually thinking ahead to the next task, next deadline, flipping through the mental to-do list to see what’s yet to come. However, as much as possible, I think, as does Joshua Rothman, that it’s important to see a to-do list as malleable and adaptable. There will always be certain hard deadlines you can’t work around, so for aspects of your life that don’t need to be scheduled down to the second, let them be free-floating blocks in your calendar. You probably can’t live one day at a time – but you can try!
