Focus on Life™

We all know people who are constantly late. Likewise we can point people who are always too busy or ‘doing it later’, which seldom occurs. Funnily enough we still all have the same 24 hours per day. That’s something we have in common—no exceptions.

Busyness is an excuse. There is always the same amount of time for everyone. It is just a matter how we use the time available to us. When someone tells you that they don’t have the time right now or they are ‘too busy’ what they really are saying is that they have other priorities that are more important at that moment. It is always about priorities and never about the time itself. When you understand this point it can improve your life significantly. Are you appreciating your current moment the best possible way for you and for others? If not then you better consider more carefully your time management.

How much time do you spend talking about doing things—instead of doing them? Explaining and describing your tasks and future undertakings will not get them done. If you are truly occupied you do not have the time to talk about doing something, you simply are carrying them out. Multitasking is also often a good time waster. What might seem to be an efficient way to do things may in actuality result many things done poorly. A focused and intensive effort often enables you to get things swiftly over with and to move on for your other priorities. Don’t take a short concentration span and efficiency as interchangeable terms—they are not. Starting lots of things and finishing only a few is not a good track record for getting things done. You also are wasting a lot of energy for the unfinished business that keeps you occupied until you give them up as wasted efforts.

How to avoid piling up plenty of work for later days that never seem to arrive? Act at once. When you read your email do something about it immediately. Don’t postpone and read it twice or even a third time before doing the required actions, even if it just means simply deleting the mail. When you learn to do things properly at once you save a lot of time for your other things. Also carrying out tasks as they arrive makes it is easier to handle your workload. Seldom we expect to have ‘more time’ available for us in the future than currently.

And the most important time saver is a very simple but difficult concept called: “no”. If you don’t like something indicate it straight away. Delaying the moment of truth does not help anyone. It gets the easier the more accustomed you become to signal early on your opinions about something. Is there any better way to save time than by refusing to engage in something that is not for you in the first place? Time management is easy, learning the lessons may take some time. It is all about how we appreciate and value our efforts and of others—by prioritising.

Titles, categories, and labels—that’s how the life is often perceived. There are different functions, tasks, and roles to accomplish and carry out. Often those names deceive us to believe and do things that we do not like. In actuality we even may do exactly the opposites in a hope of brighter days.

Work, holiday, retirement, hobbies, spare time, and weekend are not real. They are labels or symbols. You give them the meaning and special connotation. Those words often embody many expectations, hopes, wishes, and desires. And they are not real either.

Most of the titles have also their opposite counterpart. Work is considered as an opposite of pleasure or holiday. One needs to ‘work’ in order to have fun, later. This labelling is an excuse to delay or deceive oneself from the current moment. Categories are necessary as long as one needs the counterpart as well. This fragmentation is entirely useless in reality—unless you are living under its spell.

Replace the counterparts with their opposite adjectives and you start to see the absurdity. It may not be any big surprise to realise that most of the daily activities are filled with those more or less negative connotations. Wouldn’t this mean that you’re spending most of your time doing something you rather not like to do at all? If that’s the case maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities. We can only live now and it happens 24 hours a day, every single day. No holidays or exceptions.

There are two ways to cope with the situation. Either you can take a new course and start to drop off the unpleasant things and replace them with the things you love to do or you can change your state of mind towards the various engagements and tasks in your life. Nevertheless the end result is that there is no need to have various labels in order to contrast things against each other. To say it more bluntly we are taking responsibility and control of our lives and this shows in the way we carry out our daily existence. Every moment we declare by our very presence who we are. We show it by our actions, possessions, social network, even by the way we treat total strangers. No labels needed—we simply are.

Integrated living means that one’s life is consistent and in balance. There is an overall harmony and ‘lightness’ without extreme fluctuations or sudden ’highs and lows’. If you need to ‘party hard’ in order to wash off the work stress are you really enjoying your work? Life is too short to do things we do not appreciate and enjoy doing. Even hard work is fun when you’re engaged with the activities that are close to your heart and bring fulfilment to your life. Compromising seldom brings good overall results in the long term.

Still not convinced? Check again the second paragraph. It’s all about your own expectations and assumptions. The catch-22 does not open if you do not reconsider your values and priorities. If you still need those lavish expensive holiday trips and you ‘work’ only to maintain your expensive ‘lifestyle’ aren’t you saying at the same time that most of your hours are sacrificial for the few moments you spend enjoying the ‘fruits’ of your labour. As long as you cannot enjoy your life now but later you’re living in dreams and illusions. Life happens now—never later. How can you appreciate the destination if you do not value the journey as well?