Mindfulness vs Punctuality

Introducing "Dispatch Flash Philosophies"

I’m trying something new today

I’ve often got ideas that bounce around in my brain forcefully enough that I feel motivated to write an essay about them. But the number of essays I want to write far outstrips the bandwidth I have to write them. I know this is not unusual. Every creative person deals with not having enough time or energy to give every good idea the attention it deserves.

But this is Substack, baby. A new frontier. The Wild West of Personal Publishing. If we can’t experiment here, well then what even is the point.

All of which is to say, I’m going to try out a new thing.

Dispatch Flash Philosophies

The idea is simple. Periodically¹, I’ll grab one of these ideas out of the drawer and write about it for like an hour. No research. Minimal revisions. Then I’ll send it out and see what happens. Maybe it deserves more attention and a longer treatment down the road. Probably it doesn’t.

The point is, I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to write about, and if I wait until I can do a fully researched, tightly organized essay about all of it, I will write about pretty much none of it.

I promise not to spam you with garbage

I mean I promise I’ll do my best not to. For sure there will be stuff I’m convinced is platinum grade, galaxy brained insight, when actually it’s just a rehash of something Malcolm Gladwell figured out like fifteen years ago.

The great thing about the Internet is that the garbage sinks quickly into obscurity.

But everything that doesn’t get written about is an automatic miss. Something something basketball metaphor…. Here’s to taking more shots.

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Mindfulness versus Punctuality

This week, for the inaugural Dispatch Flash Philosophy, I’m grabbing a topic near the bottom of the pile — it’s just a note that says:

The tension between being time conscious and being in the moment, being present

See what I mean? This seems like it deserves a whole book or at least a TED talk, but instead I’m just gonna try to get some thoughts out.

Because it’s a hard tension, isn’t it? I feel like I struggle with it every day. I want to be present, but also there’s a list of things to do, and meetings on the calendar, and the basic courtesy of being on time to things.

And I’ve noticed that some people are naturally better at being fully present, but they constantly show up late to things — even important things — and that really sucks. And then there are people who are. Never. Late. They show up when they say they will, or early, and you can count on them for things like rides to the airport. But they also tend not to be people who are exceptionally good at being fully in the moment. Because, maybe, that if they get too immersed in something, a conversation, a creative project, the slow blooming of a flower in the garden… then they’ll run a real risk of letting someone down by being late to something.

My wife tends toward being present at the expense of being on time, while I, on the other hand, always know what’s on the schedule for today, and what it will take to get it all done. I’m good at gauging how long something will take, and bad at holding still and immersing myself in the observation of our baby daughter trying to turn the pages of a board book.

My wife gets it from her dad, who never turned down a service opportunity in his life, and has missed more flights than most people have ever booked to begin with.

I don’t know what to do with this tension other than what I do with every tension, which is to want it both ways.

I want to be on time. I don’t want to let people down, or do them the discourtesy of wasting a piece of their own valuable day by making them wait around for me. Being late is a form of social abuse, even when it’s absolutely not intended that way. The team meeting starts at 11am. The surprise birthday party happens at 8pm. The flight leaves at 2:17.

I also want to be present. I want to be just as fully absorbed as my son when he draws another treasure map on the whiteboard. I want to sit with my friend at lunch and talk about how the whole world runs on our ability to avoid contemplating death. I want to learn how to listen when I pray.

But these things are often at odds. You can’t always have it both ways, no matter how badly you want it in the moment.

So I negotiate. I try to decide if I can afford to lose myself in some particular moment at the cost of being on time to the next one.

Great solution! Except, dammit, the calculation itself costs me the very mindfulness I’m bargaining for.

And on it goes. The tension persists.

Maybe it’s this:

People for whom mindfulness is an easier default should probably work a little harder to be on time.

Meanwhile, someone like me probably needs to practice listening more closely to miracle of existence, even if it means occasionally being late to things.

1. Probably more than once a month, probably less than once a week, but who knows! Isn’t this exciting??