If you don’t do something now when will you do it? Be specific about things and put them on your calendar!
I’m a relatively happy guy, but sometimes I can get pretty out of sorts. Usually that is related to something I’ve been meaning to do, or always wanted to do. Something, of course, that remains on my “to do” list, and never quite makes it to my did list.
In my previous life I was a financial trader, and believe me, I really was one of those people who would have said on my death bed, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” I was a workaholic and prisoner of success in the most expressive sense of the word. For two years I lived in Chicago and worked in New York. Well, my home and family were in Chicago, but I commuted to New York on Sunday night and back to Chicago on Friday.
I worked over 80 hours a week, every week, and it was not uncommon for me to work 100 hours in a week. When you think about the fact that there are only 168 hours in an entire week, you realize how extreme that is.
Now I have a more relaxed life, I’m a lifestyle mentor, and I help people become who and what they want to be, based on my experiences in my own life of changing my life from one of constant overload to one of balance.
But sometimes there are things I want or need to do, even now, that I don’t get done. I have a lot of ideas in my head for books, reports, more articles. I have things I want to do to build my practice, things I want to do with my family, and books I want to read.
Of course it would be impossible for me to do every one of those things in the next few days, or even to plan to.
But sometimes I suffer from plan-itis. I’ll spend time planning what I’m going to do “when I get a chance,” but I don’t spend any time actually working on that project or making that reservation for a weekend with my wife.
We all do this. It’s called living in the future, and it’s a pervasive bad habit. It’s also a lot easier than actually doing anything about the situation. I think that’s probably why I do it.
But when I start letting myself think about what I’m “going to” do, “when I…”, I know it’s time to start asking a very basic question. That question is, “David, if you don’t do it now, when are you going to do it?”
That sounds like just telling myself to do it now, and sometimes that’s what I’m doing. But it’s also a reminder that I keep a schedule and a timetable of when things need to be done. I know that some things will need to be done at certain points in the future, and I keep track of those projects and tasks.
If you don’t do it now, when are you going to do it? Be specific and put it on your calendar.
to I Will Change Your Life for featuring this in the Personal Stories of Change Carnival, to Writing Power for including this post in the weekly links, to Anja Merret for inclusion in the Blog Carnival of Observations on Life, to Declutter It! for featuring this post in the Organize Your Life Carnival., and to E3 Success Systems for inclusion in the Carnival of Success Systems.
