By: D. A. Slinkard
I just don’t have time! Congratulations, as you have just read the sentence most often repeated with the utmost amount of conviction throughout the entire world. I oftentimes question how long we must lie to ourselves and to others before we decide that we are going to be honest with who we actually are. For instance, I can be honest with myself that I do not want to work out. I know that I need to, but knowing what I need to do and actually doing the behavior are two different things. The great thing about this concept is that I am not alone because many other people suffer from the same issue.
Simply put, if it is important to us, we will find a way; if not we will find an excuse. If you are an individual who finds yourself with more things to do than you have time, then might I suggest that you prioritize your life a little bit better? Some of you may be thinking that you prioritize your life just fine, but again it is time for you to be honest. If you do as good of a job as you think you do, you will be accomplishing more than you are achieving.
I am often asked how or what makes the biggest impact in my life, and I believe the majority of the people that ask this question leave the conversation feeling disappointed, as if they expected me to answer with some great philosophical strategy that would revolutionize the world. My answer is simple – I write stuff down, and I give it a number on my list of things that I need to accomplish.
Writing things down sounds obviously easy enough to do but many people struggle with this elementary act. Something could have happened during the day that required our attention, but because we did not write it down, we forgot about it. We remembered when it was too late, and we became our own worst enemy.
I believe our lives need to be dominated by the words of self-discipline. I think about the term “overnight success story” and what I have found is that many times these people who have been “lucky” in life were very diligent in achieving their success. People fail to realize that the overnight success story was ten years in the making. Many times, we see the end result of success and confuse it with the beginning result.
Life doesn’t work that way. I read a quote a long time ago that stated, “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” Sadly though, we have become a society that thinks we can have success the easy way and somehow obtain great things by only working four hours per week. If people spent as much time working hard as they spend trying to get out of work, how much better would their life be? If these people utilized the written to-do list, they would be so fixated on what they are trying to accomplish that they would not have time to focus on anything else.
Having success in life is about building a process of what you need to get done, making your list, and then attacking said list. This is something that everyone knows they should be doing, but just like me and working out, there are a ton of people out there who cannot do what they know must be done. You have to find a way to make your list important to you and figure out ways to get beyond the hurdles that will occur in your life. I can’t tell you how many times I breeze through items one through nine but hit a mental roadblock on completing the remaining six items.
I remember an individual telling me a decade ago that they attack their to-do list by putting things they dread doing first. This person found more enjoyment from their day by attacking the “don’t-want-to” items first, proceeded by the tasks they enjoyed doing. I have known this as “eating the frog” because once you eat the frog, then everything else will be so much easier to do. We all have frogs in our lives
that prevent us from accomplishing great things and how we overcome this is by writing the items down that need to be completed. Then it just comes down to executing what we already know we need to get done each day.
By: D. A. Slinkard
D.A. Slinkard would love your feedback. You can contact him at da.slinkard@gmail.com
September 20, 2024
