⏱ The Best Minute: Being distracted, what’s important, and the value of a schedule
💡 1 IDEA FROM ME
Most people aren't too busy, they're too distracted.
Recently, I had a conversation with someone where reading came up. I remarked that I had changed some of my habits this year and have read more books this year than I have ever read in a year before (54 as of this writing, here is a Twitter thread of what I have read this year). The immediate response I received was, “I wish had enough free time to read that much.”
In reality, my friend’s lack of reading had nothing to do with free time (or my apparent abundance of it) at all, it had to do with distraction. Busyness is a choice, and we all get to decide how we spend our time. The problem is that we often let life, instead of our priorities, decide for us. If we don’t choose how to spend our time, it will always appear as if we don’t have enough of it.
In response to my friend’s comment, I said, “Let me check the screen time report on your phone and see how much free time you had this week.” At which point he agreed, it probably wasn’t about a lack of time.
I share this not because everyone needs to read a lot. There are other great ways people can spend their time that I don’t do. But to say that if we wished there was something different about our life (i.e. we read more, we exercised more, we spent more time developing a skill, etc.), we should examine where we allow distraction to suck away our time. Using my conversation as an example:
If we want to spend less time on our phones, we should set a goal of how many minutes a day we are allowed to use it
If we want to read more books, we should set a goal of how many minutes a day we will read
If we want to read more books, we should also determine when on our schedule we will set aside time to read
The more we are proactive with our goals and desires, the less space we leave for distraction. Desire alone won’t bring us to the destination we long for. Distractions occur when we have no plan of action, so it is easy to get sidetracked.
Time isn’t the problem, it’s allowing the distraction of things that aren’t important to get in the way of what matters most.
💬 2 QUOTES FROM OTHERS
I. Gregg Margosian on what’s important in life:
“People are not a means to an end, people are the end.”
———————————
II. Annie Dillard on the value of a schedule:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.”
💯 1 RESOURCE I RECOMMEND
The Power to Change by Craig Groeschel
I found this to be a really helpful book on habit formation with practical ways to implement new desires. It was one of the motivating factors that helped me shift some of my priorities around and read more books than I ever have before.
🤯 1 INTERESTING FACT
The first oranges weren’t orange.
The original orange came from Southeast Asia and were a tangerine-pomelo hybrid, and they were actually green. In fact, oranges in warmer regions, such as Vietnam and Thailand, still stay green through maturity.
Source: RD
🤔 1 QUESTION TO LEAVE YOU WITH
Is it more important to win the battle or maintain the relationship?
