"I Didn't Have Time"
I read this post a few weeks ago from Seth Godin’s awesome blog. His writing is the epitome of “less is more” – he keeps his posts concise and gets right to the point. Here’s his post, “I Didn’t Have Time”:
This actually means, “it wasn’t important enough.” It wasn’t a high priority, fun, distracting, profitable or urgent enough to make it to the top of the list.
Every few days, Twitter and Facebook soak up a billion hours of ‘spare’ time. Where did that time come from? What did we do before social media was here? Weren’t we busy five years ago?
Running out of time is mostly a euphemism, and the smart analyst realizes that it’s a message about something else. Time is finite, but, unlike money, time is also replenished every second.
The people you’re trying to reach are always recalibrating which meetings they go to, which shows they watch, which books they don’t read. The solution has nothing to do with giving people more time (you can’t) and everything to do with creating more urgency, more of an itch, more desire.
– “I Didn’t Have Time”, Seth Godin’s blog
Being a twenty-something, I believe that the points raised in Seth’s post are especially important. We need to evaluate what matters most to us now and not 10 years from now.
Although Seth states we can’t literally give people more time, I believe you can by eliminating the distractions. Don’t go on Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat for an entire day. If you want to get a little crazy, try two or more days. I’m willing to bet you suddenly have a lot more time than you realized…
We’ve all heard it before: “Sorry, I can’t. I just have a lot on my plate right now” or “I would love to, but I am just super busy right now.” I’m not saying that those aren’t good reasons (er excuses), but the thing is, we are always going to be busy.
Life is busy. And always will be.
The sooner we realize and accept this fact as opposed to fighting it, the better off we will be. Otherwise we will spend our lives fighting a battle we are sure to lose; resisting something that is inevitable which will bring an incredible amount of stress upon ourselves, causing us to miss out on living an enjoyable and meaningful life.
We need to let go of the ideal that “someday” we will have enough time to do all the things we want to do and begin doing the things that matter most to us today.
We can spend our entire lives running around making excuses for why we couldn’t do this or couldn’t do that. Or we can determine what things are the most important to us and make a conscious effort to fit these things into our lives. If we don’t, what’s the point?
If something is important enough to you, you’ll make time for it.
