An important tool for personal efficiency is the calendar. It allows us to synchronize our time with other people and events. To be even more efficient, our calendar lets us see the white space between things. A time management principle called chunking tells us to put things together, combine, to get rid of that white space. Soon, we have full day filled with color, no white space, perfectly efficient.

In delegation, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. A truly busy person is someone who has mastered the art of white space, knows how to slot something in, adjust their schedule and carry on as if it was all there in the beginning. This is the ultimate in creating order in the midst of chaos.

And soon, we have a life full of things on our calendar. Our calendar has us. This is the rat race, the hamster wheel. Is something missing.

The balance in life is not to create order out of chaos. The balance is created on the edge between order and chaos. We have to have enough order to allow time for chaos. Thinking is unstructured exploration into chaos, and with our calendars, we have eliminated it. Most CEOs, executive managers and managers don’t have enough time to think.

Sometimes, it gets so bad, we schedule a retreat on our calendars, to give us time to think. Is it possible to schedule a daily retreat, in the midst of order, which has now become our chaos, to simply think, to reflect, to examine, to explore, to focus attention. Could you make thirty minutes a day, to do nothing but think?