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Thursday, May 28, 2015

mora [wait, time]

You would think that now that it's summer and classes and homework are no longer taking up all my mental real estate, I would have some time to put some good stuff up on the world wide web, no?
Well, evidently, we're both wrong about that time.

So, with my admittance of being lazy with the blog lately, comes a life lesson I learned while in Arkansas:

You only have time for what you make time for.

Ultimately implying that you are in control of your time more than your time is in control of you.  Obviously, there are days and times when life takes you for some unexpected turns and even though you had set apart time to finally read that book or to get the lawn done before it becomes a forest, other things end up happening.  Unexpected priorities take command from time to time, and this is a normal fact of life.  But it's the occasion.

On the regular, you fill your time each day with tasks and obligations and meetings and even sometimes a little sleep.  And each person has to choose what is most important for them to make time for.  And amidst the hectic scheduling and growing to-do lists, we each have a list somewhere of things to get around to, "if I have time".

Well look around! You have time and space all around you.  In fact, you travel through time on a very regular basis.  No matter what, you're always progressing forward, into the future.  Every moment of your life you witness the inexplicable conundrum of the future becoming the present--short-lived, and then slipping into the past.  Doing this, you acquire more and more time behind you.  The more you age, the more time you've had!  You have plenty of time!

The difference, of course, between your run-of-the-mill time traveler (like most of us) and someone who commands time, is what you do with it.

One of the most underutilized resources we have on this planet is ten minutes.
Think about it.  Ten minutes isn't that long of a wait, and you probably wait for about ten minutes several times throughout the day. For the train to come. For the water to boil. For that person you're meeting.  For the customer service representative to take you off hold.  And it's not too big of a deal, because ten minutes really isn't that long of a time.

But once you're using those ten minutes...it somehow becomes much longer than you thought.  You would be amazed at what you can accomplish in ten minutes.  I often am, whenever I remember to stop wasting my life.  If you will get off of Facebook and look at your to-do list, you'll probably find that most of those items would take only a short time.  You could call that lady back about the thing (two days later than you intended to) while you walk to work.  You could write that thank-you note from two weeks ago on your lunch break.  And then write the other one while you're in the car to pick someone up.  You could even write a blog post while you eat your lunch!

Ah.  It feels really good to get this done and stop having it hang over my head.

And the nice thing is that the more time you make for things, the more time you have.  I still haven't worked out how this actually works with the physics and the motion of the universe (since that's how we measure time these days) but I have found it to be true time and time again.  When you have a productive day and fill in the time gaps with useful things you've been meaning to do, it somehow all gets done.  More things done in less time.  It's probably witchcraft.  But it helps.  It even starts a productive cycle.  You do more, so then you feel better, so then you do more, so then you feel better.  Yeeee.

So if you feel like you don't have time for all the important things and all the things you want to do and all the things you need to do and all the things the other people want you to do....
Just make some time.