The Sailboat Kit

The Sailboat Kit

Weekly Time Management for People Who Hate Structure (but Love Metaphors.)

You can read about how the Sailboat Kit came into being here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

You quit your job (or want to, or maybe never had one in the first place) so that you could work on the stuff that’s important to you.

And honestly? Maybe just a little bit so that no one could tell you what to do.

Except—well, there might still be a voice in your head, constantly chattering about how you “should” be working on something else (and the voice is there, no matter what it is you’re working on in the current moment.)

And sometimes this voice in your head is so loud it distracts you from doing that important, creative work–you know, the work you set out to do.

You might be finding it overwhelming to balance work-life and life-life, since your time has become a big sticky paste of hmm, what next?

It might be nice to have someone to tell you to do this, now.

It might be comforting to know that someone is in charge of making sure that what you’re working on in any given moment serves the bigger picture.

Your bigger picture.

Self employment promises that you can “be your own boss” but what if that were actually true?

What if you could be the person at your side at all times, providing perspective, and reassurance that you’re heading in the right direction?

(Only imagine you-the-boss is a calmer, more centered visionary version of yourself.)

What if you-the-boss could give gentle nudges to you-the-creative to work on things that serve your own vision? (And not just artistic vision, but whole-balanced life kind of vision.)

Why a Sailboat?

When I set out to untangle this issue for myself, I realized that what I wanted was to move through time with a sense of freedom and ease.

Which for me, would be a feeling like being surrounded by open water and blue sky.

But I wouldn’t feel completely free if I was out in the water by myself. I would feel scared and uncertain. I realized that I wanted a simple, reliable machine. One that could keep me afloat without too much effort, and efficiently change course in response to my needs at any moment.

In other words, I wanted a Sailboat.*

Building your Sailboat

The Sailboat Kit walks you through the four steps involved in building your own Sailboat.

Building a Sailboat means charting a course for the way you spend your time in a given week. It’s a hybrid process—half creative, half analytical.

First, you’ll get clarity about what’s invited on board. Then you’ll create a concrete vision of what you want your week to look like (it will be a holistic view, taking into account all of life, not just work).

Along the way, you’ll explore creative techniques for moving consciously through your week—using real stuff from your own life, not some theoretical ideal.

Finally, you’ll create the actual Sailboat, a “rough draft” for your week that you can print out, and that serves as both your calendar and to-do list for the week. (But don’t worry, it won’t be some crazy, over-the-top, super-scheduled thing you won’t want to look at ever again.)

The Sailboat Kit

• 17 page Sailboat-building instruction manual
  The booklet walks you through the four steps to build your own Sailboat (this is not just re-purposed blog content, there are all! new! metaphors! for each step)
• Sailboat Scribble Sheet
  A week with dotted lines for experimenting as you build your own Sailboat
• Sailboat Template in MS Word
  The prettiness of my Sailboat was something a lot of people responded to–this lets you build something just as pretty for yourself, without having to be a designer
• Alternate Sailboat Template in MS Word
  This one in a seven-day format for those with jam-packed weekends
• Sailboat Template in Adobe InDesign
  For the designery types who prefer this format

Smooth Sailing

The Sailboat allows you to live from a place of perspective.

It helps you to manage your time by holding things but not too tightly. It gives gentle reminders about things you value, but doesn’t beat you over the head with them.

It’s not about rigid structure for structure’s sake, it’s about just enough self-defined structure to help you be your most productive and creative. So that you can spend time on the things that matter the most. (And more importantly, be able to be present during those things, not all angsty wondering whether you shouldn’t be doing something else.)

Sound like your kind of trip?

* Or, choose-your-own-metaphor.