A Minute Saved

You know the old adage A penny saved is a penny earned? This is true about minutes as well.

I’m thinking of this because I often spend my days rushing around wishing I had more time. More time to write, more time to work out, more time to play, etc. I also spend a lot of time sitting around thinking all these things. You know, like when you’re too tired to get up and go to bed, you waste time thinking about how exhausted you are instead of getting off the damn couch and going to bed? Stupid!

But this truth is going to set me free: A minute saved is a minute earned.

More often than not, the reason I waste time is likely because I’m burnt out and exhausted (mentally if not physically), and so my brain just stops on the side of the road like a worn-out cart horse and refuses to budge. But if I don’t start paying attention to what’s really going on, how will anything change?

It starts with me. I have decided to approach this problem in a new way.

My usual way to correct a bad habit is to beat myself up, to mentally harangue my frazzled self with a silent stream of internal admonishment when I catch myself messing up. It works about as well as you’d expect.

This time I am going to just simply observe how and when I stall out and go to the test pattern on the screen of life. Just observe. That way I can take notes on what’s really going on: Am I exhausted? Secretly resentful? What am I avoiding? What do I need? What’s missing or in the way?

Just observe. For a week. Then I can begin to reflect. The eventual goal here is to get a grip. But I need to be more of a therapist/coach/friend to myself than a nag. Let’s get to the bottom of this.

I’ll let you know how it goes. And here is step one: Leaving this post open-ended, without a big red bow at the end to tie it all up for you, dear reader.

It’s making me a little uncomfortable already. Oh well.