Churros and Chocolate for breakfast in Marbella, Spain.
Does life seem too short? When you look back, will you be happy with what you’ve accomplished? Are there things you’ve always wanted to do but just can’t find the time to get started? Do you sometimes feel like you should eat dessert first in case your mealtime is cut short?
Where does the time go?
It seems that, despite our current hurried lifestyles with its many distractions and demands on our time, this isn’t a new problem. Almost 2000 years ago, Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, wrote an essay entitled “On the Shortness of Life” that I just stumbled across. Even back then, people complained that life was too short. Though the average lifespan is years longer now, most of us still feel the same.
In his essay, Seneca wrote “our lifetime offers ample scope to the person who maps it out well… It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Men are thrifty in guarding their private property, but as soon as it comes to wasting time, they are most extravagant with the one commodity for which it’s respectable to be greedy. No one values time: all use it more than lavishly, as if it cost nothing.” Once time is gone you can’t get it back…
So, how do you “map it out well”?
You may have heard of the 80/20 rule: 80% of benefit often comes from 20% of your effort. Keeping this in mind, if we became purposeful and productive with just 20% of our time we might still be able to reap 80% of the benefit we achieve in a normal unstructured day. It’s difficult to change your whole life, but what about just 20% of it? Or even 10%?
Here’s one way to do it…
First: Take some time to decide what you really want from life. What are your most important goals that you’ve not yet achieved? What have you always wanted to do that you haven’t yet tried? This is where you want to focus; this is what you want create time to start doing now. Keep in mind that your goals will likely change over time, and you will want to reassess and refocus some time down the road…
Second: Ask yourself: Are you working on these goals that are important to you or just keeping “busy” with life? Remember the 80/20 rule and carve some time away for yourself from activities that really don’t matter in the overall picture, to focus on what is really important to you.
Third: Don’t multitask. Turn off distractions so you can increase your efficiency, to accomplish more in this limited amount of special time you’ve created for yourself. Multitasking lowers the quality of your attention, makes you tire faster, increases your stress and unhappiness, and lessens the effectiveness of your activity or learning.
Start now…
I’ve always been a procrastinator… in fact, my parents once gave me a little round medallion with the letters “TUIT” engraved on it – “I’ll do it when I get around to it” (a round TUIT)… a little family joke. My dad also used to call me “the late Jeannie Collins” because I was late so often, having been oblivious to time and put off preparing to go somewhere!
When we first spent an entire winter in Florida, I had several retirement activities that I wanted to do… things I’d been wanting to try, like improving my drawing, trying some painting and learning a new language. As the winter passed and March rolled around, I realized that I’d put off starting these activities, day after day, thinking that I had lots of time to get around to it. I’d “wasted” 4 months of what I thought would be a long “empty” winter! It was so easy to just fill in the time with other interesting activities.
Knowing I only had 2 more months left there, helped me to focus on what was important to me at the time, the things I really wanted to do. I started setting some time aside every day for what was important to me. At least I was able to make good use of my last 2 months to achieve a few things I’d always wanted to do.
The ancient Roman philosopher, Seneca, also said “The greatest waste of life lies in postponement: it robs us of each day in turn and snatches away the present by promising the future.” At some point, like me, you need to decide to get started and do the things you really want to do. The alternative is really just giving up on your dreams.
I read somewhere that the most common regrets expressed at the end of life are not about what the person did, but about what they wanted to do but never found (or made) the time for. So, what can you do to make sure this isn’t one of your regrets? Just like choosing to be happy, discussed in last week’s blog, choose now to accomplish (or at least work on) your life’s greatest desires. Consciously making choices now can help you to experience satisfaction and happiness as you go through life and when you look back on your past.
“Eating dessert first”, of course, isn’t really talking about food… Many of us think of dessert as the tastiest, most desirable part of a meal. The “life” version of dessert refers to the best, most desired, and most rewarding parts of your life. The expression encourages us to put the best parts of life first. The decisions you make about what you’ll do today can change your future.
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One of the reasons I write this blog each week is to investigate new ideas and learn more about being healthy myself, both mentally and physically, while I find ideas to share and answer questions from readers. Please let me know what you’d like to read about or share interesting articles you’ve read elsewhere that might provide ideas to share here. You can email me directly at Jeannie.beaudin@gmail.com or just hit the “Comments” button below or on the right!
References:
On the Shortness of Life, Seneca. Full text (translated)
