No. 31 - On rocking your day (and how to start today)

So… how was your first full week of fall? I hope you remembered to take a few minutes to pause and enjoy the first fall colours and beautiful autumnal sunrises. If it seems like all those minutes of the week whooshed away with the autumn rains, you are not alone! It always seems to me that my minutes are spent so quickly and not always wisely. This week, I went on the hunt for a little inspiration so that I can feel more at peace with how I spend my time. Interested? Take a few minutes and read on.

Spending time more wisely (and leaving time for tea!)

Don’t you find it interesting that we ‘spend’ two things: money and time? I’m sure you’re familiar with the expression, “Look after the pennies, and the dollars will look after themselves.” Wise financial advice for us all. Perhaps it's even wiser when reworded as, “Look after the minutes, and the days will look after themselves.” In Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris, Tom Peters says, “Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. It’s the quality of your next five-minute conversation. It’s the quality of, yes, your next email. Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!”

The value I see in making the next five minutes rock—and doing so repeatedly—is that life will be lived with greater intention. Although Peters also promotes thinking about “doing something cool by the end of the day” rather than spending time on your vision or big picture, I’m not sure I agree there. If we don’t stop to look at the big picture, it’s much more difficult to set our intention. And, you need to know where you are going, to aim at something so that, every once in a while, you can use five or ten of your 1,440 daily minutes to check in and make sure that all those rocked-out minutes are leading in a direction that is fulfilling, aligned with your vision of your future, and brings you a sense of calm centredness—especially when, inevitably and despite best focus and intention, a few of the day’s minutes don’t go to plan. Reminding yourself where you are going can easily be integrated with your morning tea ritual. Set yourself up for the day with a cup of tea and your phone or a notebook and decide where all those minutes need to go so you can rock your day, move calmly toward your goal and persevere, teacup in hand.

A few ideas to make the minutes matter:

1. Multitasking is not a thing. It takes 20 minutes to refocus… that’s four times more than it may have taken to just rock the first five.
2. “Rocking” your minutes and “doing nothing” are not mutually exclusive. Five minutes of daydreaming may be important for our brains to be primed for learning.
3. Tea minutes are worth two times regular minutes ;)

One more thing...

"Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun"
- Pink Floyd, "Time"

Until next time,
Steep Calm.
Bree