There is no perfect time

Everything is a compromise in one way or another

In mid-summer, I was part of a long back-and-forth conversation with a group about when to schedule something. The rest of the summer was out because people were gone on vacations. Then much of September was out because of the back-to-school craziness. Perhaps there was one week or two in September or October that was going to be good, though it wasn’t clear, as people mentioned various sports schedules. And then soon after that it would be the holidays and of course things couldn’t be scheduled then.

I had to laugh about the whole process. There is no perfect time. There is never a moment when nothing out of the ordinary is going on.

There are no typical weeks

I see this delusion all the time when people keep time logs. When people say they want to spend their time better, I suggest figuring out where the time is going now. The best way to do that is to track your time for a week. So people start, but then they often stop, or figure they can’t start for a few weeks because next week is crazy for X, Y, or Z reason. They want to track a week that shows life in a certain way, just as people are hunting on the calendar for a time when there’s nothing else going on.

But there are no typical weeks, or perfect times to schedule anything. Everything is going to be imperfect in some way, so best to accept that and deal with it.

Now, I know full well that sometimes people use busyness as an excuse. If someone doesn’t want to do something, that results in those vague statements of “oh, March is so busy, we’re going to have to look forward a little bit…” But this is a waste of time for everyone. If you don’t plan to do something, just give your kind regrets and move on.

You may as well start now

But the reverse is true, which is that if you do want to do something, there’s not going to be a better time in some magical future. You can hunt for a new job during the summer, or during the back-to-school craziness, or during the holidays, and if you want a new job, you may as well do just that. If you want to start piano lessons, there’s no point waiting until your kid’s basketball season is over because there will be something else filling the time after that.

There is no perfect time. That doesn’t mean you should schedule that big work dinner on the evening of February 14th. But it does mean that anything new has to come in the middle of everything else. Better to just accept that and start moving forward.