Zones are a big deal in permaculture design. If you're not sure about them, there's a simple explanation here, in a Permaculture Magazine article. It's pretty straightforward - zones are based on the efficient use of energy, so you place the things you use most often the closest. This can be adapted with the scale, so if you are designing an entire farm, your zones might range from the farmhouse (zone 0), through the area immediately around the house (zone 1), right through to an area of wooded wilderness at the edge of your land (zone 5). If, on the other hand, you live in a city with a tiny garden, you might be more flexible:
- Zone 0 - herb pots on windowsill
- Zone 1 - containers right outside back door
- Zone 2 - rest of garden
- Zone 3 - allotment
- Zone 4 - local farm you volunteer at
- Zone 5 - local park or nature reserve
Or you might get even more creative and split your tiny garden into zones depending how often you use each bit.
Somewhere along the way, people started to talk about 'zone 00', an inner zone of the designer themselves - the point being that if the designer doesn't look after their own health and wellbeing, nothing else in the system will work. You won't find this in every permaculture book, and it's not accepted by everyone, but today I'm not in the mood for redefining concepts or creating new terms, so for now I'm going with this one.
My inner life
I started by using Looby Macnamara's design web, from the People and Permaculture book. I've used this design tool before and found it intuitive and easy to use, especially for non land based designs.
I'd had a conversation with a friend the evening before I did this, and concluded that, while we have a big goal to move house at the minute, I didn't seem to be putting much time and energy into that, with most of my non-work days being taken up with voluntary work, meetings, visiting people, and running errands. All good things, but not one of them will get us closer to moving house.
Through doing a quick version of the design web exercise, I identified a couple of actions I could take, starting with a list of all the activities I'm involved in, the time they take up, my level of commitment, what I put in and get out of them, and some potential changes I could make.
How do I choose what to drop?
I've previously tried to think about which things I could drop, and ended up concluding I couldn't drop anything, but through this exercise I learned that, by committing to everything else, I was effectively turning my back on our main goal of moving house. Thinking of it in that way really helped me to be more ruthless.
I've decided to walk away from the allotment group.
I do feel a little bit sad about this, but not as much as I thought I would. Seven years ago I joined my (very) local transition towns group, at the time just three or four of us meeting in the pub occasionally. Through a chance meeting we were given a garden at the back of a council-run day centre to use for growing vegetables, and our small group collected a few more members and spent many happy years pottering there with occasional forrays out to support other people growing food in tiny front gardens.
I sent my resignation email the next day, and have been surprised at how light I've felt since.
That felt good - can I drop anything else?
I considered what else I could lose from my list. Much as I'd sometimes love to drop work altogether, that won't get us any closer to our goal as my wages will pay the mortgage! And I do love many aspects of my job, which is well paid, interesting and worthwhile. My support group keeps me sane, and the teenage version helps me to give back (and is only a couple of hours every month, so not a big commitment). Running keeps me healthy, music I only do once a month and is fun. Slimming club I feel very ambivalent about - I'm embarrassed to be going at all, but it's been a good thing for keeping me healthy so I'm reluctant to let it go without something to replace it. And the outside research project I've committed to and won't walk away from until it's finished.
Hmm - that seems to be an excuse for every single thing left on the list.
I decided that if I felt I couldn't walk away from anything else, I would need a way to make things more manageable. I discussed this in detail with my partner (who watches in despair as I run from activity to activity, occasionally waving hello to him as I whizz past). We came up with a few rules:
- Keep at least one weekend day entirely free. I can do things on this day if I feel like it - but I won't make any plans in advance
- Keep two other evenings free.
- Keep two weekend mornings free. My weekend is Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and often I'll plan to meet someone at 10am on Friday, do the parkrun at 9am on Saturday, and go to the allotment at 10am on Sunday, leaving me with no lazy mornings at all. Not any more!
Some of my commitments don't have set times, and I find them creeping into my thoughts every day, so I've set aside specific times to deal with them.
- Tuesday evenings are for admin and voluntary work. No looking at allotment emails the rest of the week (or at all after the end of June!)
- Tag 'outside research' project onto the end of a working-at-home day. This is an odd one - I'm part of a small team supporting a man with a brain injury to do some research of his own. I'm very enthusiastic about this, but it doesn't bring in any money, so I can't do it during work time, but the activities involved are often exactly what I do at work, so I feel almost resentful when it eats into my weekend. Instead I plan to set aside 5.30-6.30pm on a day I work at home to read emails, and be wary of how often I arrange to meet. There are other people in the team available to support him too.
Tracking my time
As part of the 'patterns' and 'reflections' aspects of the design web, I've been tracking my time this week to see whether the things that take up space in my head are really the things that take up space in my day. It's only been five days so far, but already I've made some interesting observations - I'll do a separate blog post about this when I've got a full week.
In the meantime, here's the template I created - feel free to download and use yourself.
activity_log_template.doc |
I put the actual time of day I start each activity down the side, and the amount of time it lasted in the little boxes under the category headings. I've been very detailed with mine, and carried it everywhere each week, using a new sheet for each day.
Feel free to use this template - I'd be very interested to hear how you got on. I love knowing how other people spend their days and I'm hoping this will help me to be more conscious about how I spend mine.