One of my favorite songs is ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd. I like it so much that I made myself a desktop wallpaper with the lyrics plastered all over it, as with most Pink Floyd songs it contains a powerful message and one that I thought I understood well.
I say thought, because last night I had dinner with a good friend who is off for twelve months overseas. His plane took off as I started writing this article. After the dinner, I came home thinking that it seems like it was only yesterday when he asked me if I thought he should delay his trip for six months. That was over six months ago.
I was a little mellow when he left after dinner. I will miss his company, but that wasn’t why I was mellow, I will see him soon enough and he will have the time of his life. I was mellow because six months has passed since that night I remember so clearly and I think about how far I have come in the last six months.
There are plenty of things I have got to show for the last six months of my life, but because I find myself a little mellow I have to think that I haven’t been as productive as I could have been just recently. If I did everything I could have and got this far, I would be happy knowing that I had done my best. But as it is, I feel like I have done exactly what the boys of Pink Floyd warned about.
As a result of this, I have added the following affirmation to my list ‘I will make effective use of my time today’ – this affirmation can be found on bmindful, filed under ‘proactive’ and ‘success’ tags. I will also take more notice of the big sign to the right of my computer that says ‘ Don’t be busy – Be Effective’, Unfortunately I know all about being busy, and this has to change.
Thinking about this some more, it seems that I have had plenty of warning. Just the other day my partner came home from work where a friend of hers was a little upset. She had just come from the funeral of a 49 year old lady that was no longer with us because of complications with cancer. She left the funeral thinking she was ‘wasting her time studying and working’ when she could be out ‘living life’. I remember thinking that although that wasn’t the best way to put it, there was definitely something in it.
Another ‘warning sign’ was our routine. I work from home most days, and my partner usually starts work late. Because of this, we hit the snooze button far too often and it became routine to not wake up until after eight am! This means that it isn’t until after nine that we began to be productive, and then we spend the rest of the day ‘catching up’. This kind of behavior is against many successful peoples best advice, and I have even told people before that they should wake up early.
Well, waking up early is the new routine, and instead of ‘catching up’ we spend the first few hours of the day ‘getting a head start’ this way we can finish earlier, and sleep better knowing we have put in a decent days work.
This article has been all over the place, but it definitely needed to be written. Probably more for myself than anyone else, but if it helps just one other person it was worth putting up on bmindful. The crux of it is this, if you’re productive you will get further, have less regrets, feel better about yourself and be far more fulfilled.
If you have any feedback I would love to hear it!
This post was converted automatically from the old bmindful article archive. Some of the mentioned links or references may no longer exist.
“How easy it is in our life, to miss what’s being offered.” — Paul Haller