You know that classic I Love Lucy episode in which Lucy and Ethel try working in a chocolate factory and they end up with the job of wrapping the chocolates? All they have to do is pick up chocolates as they pass by on a conveyor belt, wrap them, then place them back on the conveyor belt where they are then taken to the packing room. It seems easy at first, but then the belt moves faster and faster with more and more chocolates. Slapstick comedy ensues. They eat the chocolates they can’t wrap, hide them in their hats, stuff them down the fronts of their blouses – anything to keep an unwrapped chocolate from passing through to the packing room and thus getting themselves fired.

I think we often find ourselves in the same situation. More and more to do coming at us on an ever-faster speeding conveyor belt. And ever-more desperate (and probably not so hilarious) attempts to handle it. Because something bad is going to happen if we don’t.

Except our lives aren’t an episode of I Love Lucy (and thank goodness for that). Because we have a lot more control of our situation than Lucy and Ethel did.

Which is not to say we have control over everything…

We don’t have control over the speed of the conveyor belt.

Though Time may feel as though it passes at different speeds, we are moving through it at a constant rate. An hour is an hour, as is a day, week, month or year. We can’t turn off the conveyor belt.

We don’t have control over everything that the conveyor belt brings to us.

Life is full of surprises. We might be expecting chocolates only to be faced with a Tickle-Me Elmo. Or the Greatest Hits of Hall & Oates. Or a lawnmower. Maybe some of those surprises are a lot better than chocolate. Some are bound to feel a whole lot worse. Just because you’ve built a chocolate factory does not mean you’re getting chocolate all the time. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that once in a while something you totally did not plan on is going to show up.

We do, however, have control over everything else that is on the conveyor belt – both what it is and how much of it there is.

If you’re at the point of metaphorically stuffing chocolates down your shirt (or literally eating them) to cope, now would be a good time to remind yourself that you get to decide what kind and how many candies you need wrap.

This is important if you already tend to see your business or life as a factory and measure your success by how “productive” you are. More isn’t necessarily better. It’s just more. (And adding more and more is what makes the conveyor belt seem like it’s moving faster and faster, even thought it’s not.)

So what really needs doing? And what can you stop putting on your conveyor belt?

• A good place to start is with the stuff that gives you that feeling of: oof – another one of those? I don’t wanna. For me, this recently manifested in yet another purge of the subscriptions that arrive in my inbox. Because -oof- I do not want to read all that stuff.
• Less obvious, but important: stuff you’re doing out of such longtime practice that it’s habit – even if you don’t need to do it (that way) anymore. Lately, I’ve been looking at my lengthening list of tasks for marketing a course – and crossing off the steps that don’t get results.
• Similarly: stuff you’re doing because you should – because it’s expected, because it’s what everyone else is doing, because you might disappoint. I don’t know… let’s say: Facebook. Or replying to every comment on your blog. Or checking email way too often.
• My favorite: stuff that isn’t chocolate.
  If you are in the business of making chocolate you can, of course, produce many variations on that theme: bars and truffles, milk and dark, crunchy bits and chewy centers. But start putting salsa on your conveyor belt and you’ll have problems. Figure out the combination of activities in your business and life that are related and contribute and support each other – eliminate the tangents.
• Also, during a period of Tickle-Me Elmos, Hall & Oates or Lawnmowers – something’s got to give. Good or bad, you have to set aside wrapping candies until the unexpected has passed through to the packing room. As with me and my recent surgery. Any attempt at being productive during my recovery would have been the equivalent of putting chocolates in my hat.

You are not a victim of what’s on your conveyor belt. Because almost everything that’s passing in front of you is stuff you put on it. And you can take it off.

That’s the key to feeling better about “time management.” Not by becoming more efficient and productive, but by becoming more aware and choosy about we let on our conveyor belts.

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Related posts:

1. Time=Money
2. The right thing at the right time.
3. My Inner Veruca Salt Gets a Time-Out
4. Lessons Learned #15 – Out of Time
5. Three often-overlooked time hogs.