how to create bounce space to allow for mindfulness?
If you are human, you have probably experienced things not going according to plan. Meaning that every single person has had a moment in which things go a bit sideways.
For many people (including me) this can cause an incredible amount of anxiety, especially if you are a little overworked, over-productive, a thousand-side-hustles, has-a-hard-time-planning-for-fun kind of dude.
The sole reason is because if you didn’t write that email to your boss, handed in that analytics report, had dinner planned with your 2 best friends, did the laundry and planned for that independent project with the self-imposed deadline of 3 days and still had time to workout, and have your three meals. Then…
THEN, this is a big “then”
You will have to do the things that you didn’t do today, tomorrow.
Nice.
Along with the other 58 things that you had perfectly planned to the minute in the 28 hours that your day has because you probably treat it like it does.
This is when everything starts coming down and days push themselves into other days and the whole week merges and you can’t even turn the page to your weekly calendar because you still have things on your to do list of last week that you have to get done first.
It becomes a mess.
And that’s why we are here.
What is bounce space?
Forgive me if this term already exists and if it doesn’t well… 😉
Bounce space is time that you have to allocate for the unprecedented (if you believe you are a superhuman, then precedented) moments in life.
For the spontaneity of you may. For that date with the stranger that you didn’t have planned a month before, for the hangover, for when you get sick, for when your brain is just not braining.
This sounds like a simple concept because it is, but the cool part about bounce space is that if not needed, you get to…
Wait for it…
Relax.
And I mean it. Use it to relax.
Of course, it is also very useful if you had something unexpected happen yesterday. Now you actually have time to deal with it today.
The thing with bounce space is that to use it, we first need to learn how to set our priorities, and to do that, we have to learn to be realistic with ourselves.
What is your capacity? What can you actually do in this amount of time… on a bad day?
I always like to think of how long things will take me on a bad day because if it is a bad day then I won’t feel horrible if I don’t do it as quickly and if it is a good day, then I have less pressure and more space for flow and creativity.
For example:
Right now I am on my week off and I was thinking of going to explore the city by myself, maybe find a little corner that I like, a new coffee shop maybe. I went with the purpose of finding a place to get some work on, on a good day, and just wondering if it was a bad one.
But you see, it wasn’t a good day. I got lost so many times that by the time I found myself, coffee shops were closed and I needed to be home soon.
But… Since this was the plan for a bad day and not for a good one (not that it was bad, just inconvenient) then now I didn’t have to do anything. I could accept it easily, knowing that I had a bounce space the next day to catch up.
My plan for a bad day or just for a regular day (I think we need to use another term here) was to just explore and have fun. Which I did. I had ice cream, and it was awesome.
Why this isn’t pessimistic?
Maybe it is the phrase “set up for a bad day” that sounds a little scary. I doubted myself when I was writing this because no one wants to do the opposite of setting up for success.
But if you think about it, that is exactly what we are doing. By knowing our capabilities and how we manage time and our energy, we can let go of the expectations of the outside world, and maybe even of our own expectations and do the amount of work that we can actually do on a set amount of time.
The work needs to be done, whether it is a productive day or a day in which things are not flowing as much. So if you plan according to the time it will take you when things are not flowing, you are more relaxed.
You have more time and you can move slower with much more calm.
On moving slowly
That takes us to the concept of moving slowly and living a slow life. This has been trending lately and I believe for a good reason.
We are shifting to a more connected way to view a life and a more intentional way to live it.
When we have bounce space, it feels like we have a giant cushion all around us. We are taking care of ourselves when we allow for bounce space because we are being sweet and understanding with the part of us that in a future maybe isn’t feeling that productive.
Then future you will be less stressed when they find out that on that really bad day you only scheduled for her to do the laundry knowing that it was going to go be a heavy day and you accounted for that.
It is more about showing love to ourselves and still getting things done than about being more productive.
You can be as productive as you want while still giving yourself this hug. It is a balance between moving forward and moving things along while still being mindful.
Our idea of productivity
You might read this and try to implement it, but then drop it because moving slow is harder than moving fast.
We are so used to everything moving at a thousand miles an hour that when we stop for a second; we get confused and we feel like a little volcano ready to explode. We have a hard time being in the moment.
And I mean that “we.” It is not a “you thing” it is a thing that we are all going through and that we are all choosing to slowly change. I invite you top open up to the idea of a non-over packed day.
And I understand…
I am the first person to crave that perfect day in which everything moves perfectly along and fast. You wake up, cook a great breakfast and actually do the dishes cause you feel like it and then put on a bomb outfit and go out to rock your day and get so much work done. Then during lunch you see one friend, then you get a lot more work done and then you hit your preferred choice of workout and feel nice, all sweaty. After that, you go for dinner with a friend and drinks with a different friend and somehow still manage to get to bed at 12 am, feeling STILL with some energy.
But I am also the first person to which this only happens once every blue moon, just for the mere fact that life happens.
You don’t have to be productive to be worthy.
You are not even here to be worth anything. Adding worth to people is a weird concept to me.
Just chill here and live life and try your best to do something that is meaningful for you, and if you can’t for whatever circumstances, you still have bounce space to do small things that are intentional.
You are not a machine.
We are human; we are not that predictable
We love to think that we know how a day is exactly going to go, and we never know.
How do you even know if you are going to wake up with your dominant foot this morning?
Well, even if you have a perfect diet that supports brain function and a workout routine that perfectly lets go of your stress. And on top of that, having the perfect relationships with those you love and a successful career….
EVEN THEN, you will have those days in which something is off.
You deserve that bounce space because life is unknown, life is unpredictable and full of unprecedented moments.
I know sometimes we wish it weren’t, but that is what makes it fun (in a way), that is what life is.
Creating bounce space
After my whole motivational speech, I want to show you how you create bounce space.
First, we have to prioritize.
Let’s say that you have a list of 10 things that you have to do. In this list includes meals, showers, chores, and errands. Because those are the first things that either we push aside or that interrupt our day because we didn’t plan for them.
Let’s say that those are the first 5 things.
Now you have 5 other tasks. Be realistic with yourself.
Which of these can you actually do in the time left in your day? Pack it up according to the time you think you need.
Now cut half of those tasks off.
Don’t plan your day minutes by minutes because eventually some minutes are going to slip up and everything is going to shift.
Second, you want to have time between tasks
That is your between bounce space. Your created bounce space is the space that you have previously created by extending the amount of time you need for tasks. You now have two types of bounce space: the space within and the space between tasks.
Now you can move slower.
Introducing bounce space is not easy. It is something that will take you at least a month to welcome completely because it’s hard to just cut off half of your tasks that you needed to do just because. Those tasks would just get accumulated into the next days.
To implement bounce space, you add it to the future. As you are scheduling future things, you make sure to not over-schedule and that you schedule being mindful of your bounce space. That way, when you get to the week where you started scheduling bounce space, you will be a lot more calm.
Remember that taking things slower takes time and a lot of effort.
Prompts
This week’s blog was a different kind of blog, so these prompts are going to be about introducing slowness into our lives and exploring our fears with it to make introducing bounce space smoother.
- What does constant movement and productivity bring to the table for you?
- What makes slowness slightly dreadful for you?
- What do you fear will happen if you relax or just do nothing?
- What does setting up for success mean for you?
- What would you do if you had time?
Stop rushing yourself, move slower, and be more intentional. Most importantly, be realistic with yourself and how much you can do in a certain amount of time. Productivity isn’t tied to your worth.
