The Dog Ate My Homework.
Where did the time go? When I
was a kid summer break felt like it lasted an entire year. Endless sunny
days spent riding my fuchsia colored Schwinn down long country roads past corn
field and barns passed the time. We spent countless hours at the town’s
swimming pool and the only rule was to be home by the time the street lights
came on. We often spent the evenings catching fire flies and playing kick
the can. Somehow by summer's end I was always excited and ready to head
back to school. I remember older people often saying, “Just wait until
you’re older. Time just flies by.” I thought they were crazy but
now I realize it is true. I often catch myself thinking, “It feels like
it was just yesterday when…” Life goes by too quickly and the value of
time is, well, priceless. We never seem to have enough of it. How
do we make the most of the time we do have?
Teach us to number our days, that we
may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12
Our time is valuable and we need to
protect it. I challenged myself this
week to keep track of the amount of distractions to my time. I like to think I have effective time
management skills but I was surprised by the amount of distractions when
consciously paying attention. A study at
University of California, Irvine revealed that 23 minutes and 15 seconds is the
amount of time it takes to return to the original level of concentration for
any given task after an interruption or distraction. Their study showed that distractions derail our
mental progress, impacts our productivity, reduces performance, increases
stress and can basically put us in a bad mood. The believable, yet shocking, statistic is
that the average person checks their phone 85 times a day! That is 1,955 minutes, or 32.5 hours of lost
concentration because of texting, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and emails! I don’t know if I do this 85 times a day but I
do check my phone a lot. We need to
protect our time! Do I really need to
take that Facebook quiz to determine my spirit animal? How long have I been watching these baby
goats jump around in pajamas? I started
to limit my phone time and practice what I call “intentional TV watching.” I tape my favorite shows and only watch
exactly what I want, when I want, with zero commercial interruptions.
Recently a friend shared that they
would like to work out but they just "don’t have the time."
They work long days and have two young children. I completely understand
that. I often struggle with my work schedule to get in my workouts
and I don’t have kids. This comment really made me think about the issue
of time. I know it’s a struggle for so many and the struggle is
real. Keeping it real is the mantra of this blog, so in the spirit of
love and keeping it real, it’s true that those who think they have no time to
exercise now may be forced to find time for illness at some point in their
life. There’s an incredible study from the Cornell University called the
Legacy Project. Researchers interviewed over 1,500 people, 70 years old
and older, from across the country. They collected their wisdom for
living with answers to this question, “What are the most important lessons you
have learned over the course of your life?” Their advice is captured in
an amazing book, “30 Lessons for Living” by Karl Pillemer. One of the
interviews that caught my attention was with Manuel, age 79.
“Start thinking about the consequences of your health while
you are young. What you do when you’re young, it will hunt you up when
you get old. If you’re young, take care of your body, live right, go to
the doctor and keep yourself in good shape. And don’t abuse your body in any
way, shape, or form with everything. Like the good book says, too much of
anything will hurt you. Too much smoking will hurt you, too much drinking,
too much drugs will hurt you, too much medicine will hurt you. So you
can’t overdo any of those things, that’s what it takes to keep your body in
shape so that when you get old your body is not hurt. Now if you don’t do
that, a lot of things might come out later on in life.”
Jim Valvano said, “There are 86,400 seconds in a day. It’s up to you to decide what to do with them.” A 15 minute workout is only 1% of your day. A 30 minute workout is only 2% of your day. A 60 minute workout is only 4% of your day. I think it’s a matter of determining what is truly important and making the time for what is important. How can we make the most of the time we have to do what’s truly important?
If we’re really keeping it real, I
also think that “I don’t have time to workout” is the adult version of “the dog ate my
homework.” Hey, I say this because I was completely guilty of this. I used to
say I didn't have time, especially when I would get home late from work.
The real "get real" truth was I simply just didn’t want to. I
would seek excuses and it didn't take much to find one. I still never
feel like I want to work out. I do want results so I force myself to work
out and I am always glad I did. If it’s important to you, you’ll find a
way. If not, you’ll find an excuse. I know from experience. Often it’s how we view things. I now
feel exercising is a blessing. I work out
because I am grateful that I physically can. If you started today, three
months from now, you will thank yourself. Working out has given me a new
physical body. I have more energy, more confidence, better health,
stronger focus and I actually feel like I have more time in my day now, not
less. I truly had to make it a top priority when I started this
blog. Sometimes we have to get creative. If you work four ten hour
days with kids, perhaps you lift weights at the gym three days over the weekend
and go for walks on your lunch break during the week. Perhaps you can find a
way to include the kids in with your workout and set a great example for them
to see you making it a priority.
Peter Turla says, “Managing your
time without setting priorities is like shooting randomly and calling whatever
you hit the target. Living your life without a plan is like watching television
with someone else holding the remote control.” Stephen Covey said, “Time
management is really a misnomer- the challenge is not to manage time, but to
manage ourselves. The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule,
but to schedule your priorities.” I am convinced that the way you spend
your time determines the quality of your life. This journey helped me see
how much time I was truly wasting before when I thought I didn’t have time to
work out. How often do we spend time in a zombie state in front of the TV
or scrolling through Facebook? “There is never enough time to do
everything but there is always enough time to do the most important thing,” says
Brian Tracy and he is right!
We need to protect our time. We need to be selfish with our time. Time is the most valuable thing a man can
spend. The 86,400 seconds you get in the morning is gone in the evening. You
can’t use any of it in advance and you can’t pile it up. You can’t live in the
future. You can’t live in the past. You can only live in the present, using the
seconds available to you, right now. You can't save time in a bottle,
although I wish we could. You also can't save lightning bugs in a bottle,
at least for very long. We need to make the most of the time we are given
now so we can get the most out of life and live to our fullest potential.
Sophia Bedford-Pierce says it best, “Be mindful of how you approach time.
Watching the clock is not the same as watching the sun rise.”
"If I could save time in a
bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do is to save every day."
~ Jim Croce
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