Does How You Spend Your Time Align with Your Values?
It’s hard to invest in community if we have no time.
In my months of researching community building for my forthcoming book, there are a couple of elements that come up over and over as essential to finding meaningful connections. One of these elements is time. The truth is, there is no Amazon one-click for community. Finding and investing in a community is not like online shopping, where you can endlessly scroll for the perfect fit and click a button to have it delivered frictionlessly to your door. You have to invest time in trying things out, showing up over and over again, building relationships, responding to messages, following through on your commitments, and not quitting the moment things get rocky. And all of that takes our most valuable asset in late-stage capitalism – time.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about not just the skills and circumstances we need to build community, but how we protect the time and bandwidth we need to foster connections. Between work, caregiving, domestic chores, and the myriad of obligations that make up modern life, it’s no surprise that community participation often falls to the bottom of the to-do list. One idea around freeing up time I introduced to How to Find Your People Club members a couple of months ago that y'all loved is “The Don’t List.” (P.S.: Since I published that piece, I love watching videos from the similarly themed, viral social media trend, the “We Do Not Care Club.”)
This month, we’ll be looking at other ways to examine how we spend our time aligns with our values. I have A LOT of thoughts aimed at parents around the time-consuming nature of kids’ activities, but there will also be some self-reflection exercises for those who aren’t parenting kids at home around time and values.