The Clock is Ticking

 So, Here is a thought for you. Procrastination sucks. 

Time is all there is in the NOW, and it seems to go by faster the older we get. Being in my sixth decade, I cannot believe how fast it goes by. It seem like the minute you get the Christmas lights down, you have to turn around and put them up again. 

When we were kids, time dragged on. School days lasted for hours on end, and the only time it seemed that time sped up was either when you had a paper due, or you were out playing and had to come in.  The big difference is that as you grow older, you become more aware of the time. You begin to deal with schedules. You have appointments. You have kids that are in sports, you have a job, you have a family, and suddenly time just accelerates and you "have no time to do anything but what you have to do." 

I have a daily planner as most organized people do. I have had to get into the habit of actually using it. I know everyone of you has started the year with a planner, sat down with good intentions, and at the end of the year, January is nicely filled out, then nothing except birthdays and anniversaries that you filled in the first day that you had it.  Do yourself a favor and use your planner. Along with the appointments and the stuff you have to do, block out a time during each day to not do anything, and stick to it. It does not have to be a huge amount of time, just a time every day around your other stuff to hang out with yourself. 

I sell cars, so my days are spent full on waiting for the next customer to walk in or on the phone trying to generate the next buyer. So when I am at work, I try to be productive with my time. I also block out a little time during each day to decompress. Even if it's only 15 minutes. On my days off, I do stuff with my wife, but there is always a me time  block there to just be with me.  I like to take short naps in the afternoon on my days off. I always have time to do that, because it recharges my spirit and body. Napping is not wasting time, it is a necessary time to let the body slow down. There has been much research done on the benefits of napping, and many large corporations encourage a 15 -20 minute power nap which has been shown to increase productivity. 

But let's get back to the main point of time. We cannot get time back. Procrastination is a killer. We tend to procrastinate over the things we don't like to do. Doing taxes, cleaning house, seeing the doctor or dentist, emptying the cat box. All things that if left for later  can turn bad. We would rather just sit around on the computer, or watch TV or do anything other than what needs to be done. And funny enough, once you do get the stuff done, a lot of the time you will ask yourself, why didn't I do that sooner?  

Budget your time. It goes by fast. My wife was raised by British parents, and over the last 20 years with her, we have never missed tea time. It is a great habit, because it makes you slow down and take a break from the day. In Mexico, they have mid day siesta. Very smart. Anything to break the stress of the day up. You need to find your own way to break the day up and take time for just you. You will find that your stress levels will drop a lot!

I cover this in my book,  The Self Help Book for People Who Hate Self Help Books.   

Here is an excerpt from the chapter "There is no Present Like the Time"

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How much time do we waste doing … whatever...?  We have to sleep, we have to eat, we have to work.  In this day and age, we have to check our email, we have to look at Facebook (to see what all our thousands of friends are doing). I suppose if you took a stopwatch, and timed all the things that distract you, you would be amazed, no, GOBSMACKED by how much time you devote to useless, aimless distractions.  We all do.  And, as the technology gets more advanced, we will continue to divert our creativity to the tiny micro-processors in our devices. We will, in a sense, become the BORG. Like in Star Trek, Next Generation. All of us part human, part machine, run by one group conscious in our wearable tech.  Look around you.  How many people do you see with their heads in their smart phone or smart watch? A little scary, huh? Now, let’s just play with some hypothetical numbers.

 

Say the average guy or gal spends 1 hour on their phone a day doing useless, mindless crap.  Now let’s insert that into a business setting that has, say 50 people working there. Already you see that there is 50 hours a day of lost production.  Over a 5-day work week, that would be 250 hours a week of lost production.  Let’s say each person makes 20.00 per hour.  That comes to $5,000.00 a week that the company is spending on people doing meaningless stuff on their phone. ($260,000 a year). That's a lot of money spent for people to play silly games, or comment on someone's restaurant choice.

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That is, or course, a rather simple example, but you get the point.

Time and Tide wait for no man. - Geoffrey Chaucer

It is a fact that we are only here in this incarnation for a very short time. A blip on the evolutionary clock. It is only common sense, then, to make the best of that time and not fritter it away.  Balance your time wisely and you will find you get more done and feel better about yourself. Have a wonderful day. 

Links to my book

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Happy Birthday....... to me

 So today I was sharing my yellow shirt blog (August 2017) with a coworker and she said to me "Why don’t you do more blogs?"  So here I am once again thinking about what to write about.

The obvious thing would be my 60th birthday coming up on March 25. Never thought I’d get this far, but since I’m here, when people ask how old I’m going to be my response it’s just,  “A little bit older than I was yesterday”. 

 Birthdays are a funny thing... they come along once a year and they mark the date of your birth, but time really doesn’t really care if it’s your birthday or not. I tell people I’m going to be 60 and they look at me and say "oh my God you don’t any older than being in your late 40s." I find that is complementary because I try to take care of myself, and I don’t want to look or act my age. If one were to really think about it  when you hit 60 you’re really not much older than you were when you were 59 yet we’re starting a brand new decade and psychologically that can be a bit daunting.

 I’m proud to say that I’m only on one regular medication at 60, and that’s for a blood sugar issue. Between diet and exercise and this light medication I think this shouldn’t  be a Big deal. I do feel much better and have a lot more energy since I’ve watched my diet in the last couple of weeks.. as a matter fact my wife and I took a nice long hike in the high desert around Las Vegas last weekend it was great. So I guess I’m as young as I feel right now I feel like I’m probably in my mid 40s. I look in the mirror And the guy looking back at me doesn’t look at all like the 60-year-olds I remember when I was in my 20s. I guess everything is relative and I do see that the passage of time seems to go faster, as people say it does when you get older.  I never really understood that concept because time doesn’t pass any faster now than it did when I was 18. Maybe it’s because when you’re older,  One tends to use their time more wisely, therefore you have less wasted time and the time you do use seems to go faster because when you’re doing something you never have enough time to get it done. When you’re sitting around, time seems to go by in a crawl.

I hear a lot that 60 is the new 40. Actually 60 is 60 and 40 is 40.  Even in  good health I enjoy now, I know there are things that I won’t do now that I could easily do when I was 40 years old. I won’t go into a long list but those of you were in your late 50s or early 60s know exactly what I’m talking about. And… It’s OK. I don’t have to be at 40-year-old.  I can be proud of where I am and know that people look at me and don’t think I’m a broken down old man.

In my job I see a lot of people who are younger than me with one foot in the grave, and it is really sad because they have that “ I’m old”  state of mind.  This is not really a healthy thing because you can talk yourself into being old at any time in your life. I’ve run into 40-year-olds who think life ends at 40,  and it’s very sad. But all you have to do is just look in the mirror every day,  and thank your higher power that you woke up on the proper side of the lawn this morning, and then get on with your day... embrace it, love it and enjoy life instead of thinking about the fact that you might be a day older today than you were yesterday. People ask me...”you’re going to be 60 ...are you having a big huge celebration? ...what are you doing? It’s a big birthday ....yada yada yada”...I just tell them every day is a celebration for me and every day is a Birthday I’m 21,900 days old!  I think all in all I’m doing pretty damned well. Embrace today like there’s no tomorrow. And take each day like it is a gift. Take care your health because it’s stupid not to. And if you don’t take care yourself, then you have no place to bitch about feeling like you’re 1000 years old. I’m looking forward to my birthday although I’m a little sad that I can’t eat the cake. But I’ll let others enjoy that for me.

Happy 2019 ... Resolutions?

Tick Tock...2019 is almost here.  If you had resolutions for 2018 that are not yet achieved, you'd better get on it! You are running out of time, and soon you will be too late and will have to stack them up on your 2019 list....Personally, I don't do resolutions, because, in general they are just too stressful....Especially when you tell EVERYONE what your resolution is...'cause then they are watching you.....and REMINDING you....

New years day. New years Eve, actually the whole "time" thing is just an illusion.  Time is a relative thing. I mean twice a year we all RESET time either ahead or back..Every 4 years we add a day to the year...WE are the only ones that care about time.  Our ancestors didn't give a crap about time. It was like 'Big ball of light in sky...go hunt. try not to be food to saber tooth cats...Big ball leave sky, small white light, dark...go to cave go to sleep...start again tomorrow...'

People are the only ones who are ever "late" for anything.  All other animals arrive when they get there. 

Today is Winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. so, there are cycles, but time is really meaningless.  So, as January 1st comes and goes, know that if you make a resolution, just do it. Don't put a time limit on yourself.  It's just passing of the big ball of light into the smaller ball of light. 

Happy New Year....