Taking a Closer Look at "How We Spend Our Days"
I'm writing this post particularly for any other coaches who may be reading, with the intention of expanding awareness around some of the questions we ask and assumptions we may not realize we are making.
A few days ago, I underlined these lines in the book I'm currently reading by Catherine Price: "[Our] attention is the most valuable thing we have. We experience only what we pay attention to. We remember only what we pay attention to. When we decide what to pay attention to in the moment, we are making a broader decision about how we want to spend our lives."
And of course, this brings to mind the oft-quoted words from "The Writing Life" by Annie Dillard: “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”
Last weekend, walking up Amity Street, I noticed the cracks in the aging sidewalk formed what looked like a pie chart, with four wedges and a small circle in the center. Later, I marked it up, writing "core values" in the middle and simply the word "time" in each of the wedges.
Where does your time go, and is it in sync with your core values? This was the question the image sparked for me. I posted it in my Instagram stories and, briefly, on Facebook.
But later, after sitting with it, something felt off. For while I do believe in agency, in the nearly 20 years since I stepped into my first coaching training workshop, I've also come to see more and more (and more) how this kind of question can also be harmful.
As both a writer and a coach, I see it as my responsibility to invite a closer look at the language we use, the questions we ask, and the assumptions they may contain and convey.
After all, if we don't become more conscious of these, our perception remains limited and we're more likely to fall into the trap of self-blame rather than also expanding our perspective to one that is structural in nature.
So, back to the photo I took. The more I considered it, the ickier it began to feel. As I looked at why, a few things came into clear view.
1. Ableism
If you have chronic pain/illness, how you spend your time might not reflect your core values, because taking a shower or making a phone call or responding to an email might have used up three-quarters of your mental and physical energy for the day. All too often, coaching language weaponizes time, as if it's a thing that lies entirely in the realm of personal choice, personal habits, personal values, thus shaming the individual rather than calling us to look at our collective, cultural, and capitalism-driven definitions of and beliefs about wellbeing.
2. Classism
The bottom line is that the question itself of whether your values are aligned with where and how you spend your time is rooted in an assumption that you have "extra" time in the first place. If you're working your ass off to pay off student loans (if you were even able to go to school), feed your kids (if you have kids), keep gas in the car (if you have a car), and keep your head above water, a question like this might come as a slap in the face, implying that somehow you're doing something wrong. Or, just as bad, it doesn't even see that you exist. It only sees folks who have the financial ability to pause for a beat and assess their lives in this way.
3. White supremacy
It is an intrinsically supremacist perspective to center the individual without taking into account the systems that affect and shape our realities. This is the biggest problem with the whole "we create our own realities" trope, which is like whiteness in a bottle.
I took the post down after a few hours, not because I don't see the value in this kind of inquiry, but because without more nuance, without a broader lens, it's short-sighted at best. I didn't want to share it without more thought.
I actually do believe that how we spend our time and what we pay attention to can be microcosms of what we value and how we spend our lives.
However, if we buy into this kind of thinking without addressing the above, without looking at the ways in which it ignores structural inequities and deeply embedded beliefs that center wellness and whiteness, we're really missing the boat — and an opportunity to challenge ourselves to think more critically, see more broadly, ask better questions, and ultimately, contribute more consciously.