Happy New Year everyone! I trust you all had an outstanding end to 2010 and began 2011 with all the excitement you could muster. Have you reflected on all the things that made last year what it was? Have you considered how you are going to move on to bigger and better things for this coming year? Now is the time!
Time is our most precious asset but it is totally non-renewable. We all have exactly the same amount of time each week. We have 168 hours or 10,088 minutes. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? But once it is gone, it is gone. What will you have to show for your time at the end of your week?
Are you one of those people who say that you don't have time to do this or that? Are you sure that is the case? Let me challenge you. Why not keep a time log for one week? Make yourself a simple grid, either on a piece of paper, or you can make up a spreadsheet. Down the side put 15 minute time slots from about 6 am, or earlier if you are regularly up earlier, and stop at your normal bedtime. Across the top put 7 days beginning with whatever day you start. For each time slot, write in what you did. Colour coding is a great visual aid as you start to see a pattern for your regular habits. Perhaps eating times could be green, for eating healthy. Work could be blue, travel times yellow, etc. Those slots with nothing in them are your spare moments of every day.
Most of us might consider that the few 15 minute time slots aren't worth worrying about. Consider this. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the wife of a minister and mother to 7 children, used her few minutes of every day to write the famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. This she often did by candlelight after her children had gone to bed. Makes our excuses seem a little lame, doesn't it?
So, in your few minutes of each day, what could you do? Could you prepare table topics for one of your club meetings? How about selecting a word to be the grammarian? And of course, you could outline a speech and then add the details. Maybe you'd like to work on an HPL project.
Often we think in terms of spending time doing one thing or another. I challenge you to rethink this. Stop spending your time and start investing it. Invest it in your future; your goals; your dreams. You could invest it in learning a new skill. Did you know that 15 minutes a day would add up at the end of a year to the equivalent of time invested in a university credit course? Invest it some activity to increase your fitness level. Invest it in some time for leisure to keep your mental state from stressing out. Whatever you do, invest it in achieving something of value. Time is going to pass regardless of what you do. Invest it so that when time is running out, you can say that you have lived in such a way as to minimize any regrets.
Let 2011 be the year that you rethink your future. Do you know that most people spend more time planning a two week vacation than they do planning their lives? Don't let that be you. Plan today so that you will accomplish what you set out to accomplish with your one life to live. Set your sight now on June 30th. What will you be celebrating? Write and tell me so I can celebrate with you.
Happy 2011. Plan on it.
Merri
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