I have always struggled with time. There's never enough of it to do all the things that I want to do. Again and again, I would set up elaborate schemes to help me do paid work, develop Deer Tracks, do my house work and gardening, do things for my various tribes and close relationships, and follow my own rambling spiritual journey. I was always on a quest for a system that would enable me to do it all.

Some of these schemes were wild and wonderful. Either I would be frantically counting up the hours I was doing paid work and then try and balance that with everything else. Or I would try and make my life fit with the cycle of the moon. Or I'd prioritise things very rigidly.

And these schemes would work. For about three weeks. Or three days. But very soon the whole thing would come crashing down. Either because I noticed that certain things just never got done. Or because I made myself so tired that I was ready to collapse after the Thursday of the first week.

And then I hit upon a luminous idea. I made a distinction between work and not-work. Because I had real trouble with that. Obviously paid work is work. But what is doing a shamanic journey when you're a shaman? What is writing an e-mail to a friend if they are part of the tribe you are organising things for? Where is the boundary? Another reason why this is difficult for me is that I work very irregular hours. A couple of days a week, I work in the evenings and don't get home till quite late. So the boundary is blurred again. This confusion meant that everything started to look like work. I just felt that I was always working on something, whether it was a Dutch lesson or an art project, a workshop or my own spiritual development. And that was exhausting.

So now I have made a clear boundary. Things that I do in service of some kind are work. Things that I do simply for me are free time. Simple. I have set myself a number of hours of work per day and per week. And the rest of the time is mine to do with as I please. And you know, it is the most liberating scheme I've ever come up with! Miracles have started to happen. I get more stuff done. Both in my work time and in my free time. It's amazing

The secret is to hold that boundary as sacred. Work time is sacred work time. I protect it and don't let it dissipate into something else. And free time is sacred free time. I don't let work encroach upon it. This is sacred time. It makes me much more able to stay in the moment, to not get distracted by other things. It helps me to enjoy what I'm doing, and to be grateful for it.

It strikes me that all of this sounds obvious. But for me it wasn't, and now I really feel I have made a breakthrough. With this structure in place, I feel confident that I can get somewhere with the project for the year to come: to build a Sanctuary for body, mind and soul.