Run Time: 3 minutes 19 seconds
My friend Sam and I were bouncing around ideas about how we plan to make this year super awesome.
He mentioned that one of his goals for the year was to find and pursue the thing that most makes “time melt” for him. As he explained it, when time melts, that’s when he knows he is doing what he loves and fully engages him.
Joseph Campbell said follow your bliss. Tony Robbins and a gazillion others talk about finding your passion. Flow state is the term of the moment in peak performance circles.
At the end of the day it’s all the same sentiment. Still, it’s important to find the words that resonate truthfully with us.
Sam found the words that work for him and that will pull him toward his goals.
Once he found the right words, it turned out that he already knew what makes time melt for him. Music.
It’s interesting that he had a goal to find out what he already knew. Once we started talking about what it might be that makes time melt for him, he clearly and succinctly identified it in seconds.
I find the same is true for me. I know but I don’t do.
Why do we make it so hard to do the things that engage us fully?
Seems like it should be so obvious to us that we would just prioritize it. Right?
For both of us, the answer was staring us right in the face and still we weren’t going for it. Not to say that we need to make our lives a vehicle for our passions. Some people argue for that but I’m not one of them.
I’m more of the school that thinks we should make “sacred” or “non-negotiable” time to do the things that engage us to our core because those are the things that give us the energy to make other parts of our life work.
I often think about how people from earlier times knew so much. Think of trying to read a book from the 1800s or early 1900s. How much latin do you have to look up (google translate I guess)? How many allusions are there to other authors and history and the philosophy and science of the day? A lot in my experience. How were so many people polymaths?
The depth and breadth of great minds was and is immense.
Look at all of the stuff Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo were amazing at. They were unusual talents but they only had the same amount of time as the rest of us.
What did they have that I lack.
Sometimes I wonder if it is the ability to focus and forget about the distractions around me. My mind flits off at the slightest provocation. I waste time. So much time!
I live in the wrong era to have a flighty mind. Maybe you do too. Right now is the golden age of distraction. Social media, binge watching, music streaming, books on tape, and a gazillion other things.
Personally, I need to make a special point to do just one thing. The temptation is to multi task. For me, that is putting in the time at a couple of things, simultaneously, and not getting the full benefit or enjoyment of either.
I think back to my childhood when I would spend hours and hours for days and months designing my dream houses and drawing them on graph paper. Or, the weeks I would spend designing a campaign for Dungeon and Dragons. Designing dungeons and populating them with monsters and treasure and surprises consumed me. I went deep in concentration and effort and enthusiasm.
And, I never felt like I was missing out.
Now my day is a series of check boxes. Yep, did that task. Check. Time to check my email. Oops, push that “to do” to tomorrow because I got “busy” doing a personality quiz on Facebook.
These days, I find it hard to make enough time for anything. I feel that there is always a time deficit.
That’s a feeling not a reality.
Trust me, for most of us there is enough time. I did a lot at the office today but I also wasted at least an hour checking the news or stock prices and erasing emails. That’s an hour I could have done something else. That isn’t even taking into consideration the time that I had to spend getting back on track after I was distracted or distracted myself.
And today wasn’t a particularly egregious wasting of time by my recent historical standards and still extrapolating out that is 9 standard work weeks in a calendar year.
If I earned all of that time I wouldn’t suck at Japanese anymore. It’s so obvious but still I find myself losing the battle with distraction and wasted time.
My wife is constantly commenting that she feels too busy to do this and that but still she found time to binge watch six seasons of Downton Abbey in a few weeks last fall. She’s not alone. It is becoming a badge of honor to binge watch. Six seasons of Downton Abbey is 56 hours…I googled the answer (when I was feeling distracted).
Is watching TV bad? Not necessarily. But, accepting binge watching as a way of life is not normal! It the result of science, advertising, and the power of suggestion being turned-on us to keep our Pavlovian responses in overdrive.
Most of our busyness is choice. It’s poor prioritizing. It’s not having a plan. Things are complicated by how much money and effort is poured into playing our subconscious like a virtuoso by people who we should never give that permission to.
The reason why it was so easy for us to figure out what makes us feel alive is that we know all along. We let ourselves be distracted and distraction is the easy road. We just don’t make it a priority or have a plan for battling it.
Understandable. The forces that want to distract us have vast resources and motivation. How many notifications do you have on your phone? How many times did social media pull you in today? How many times did you check CNN to see if the President did anything that you can be irate about on FB?
We want to do the things that when we are engaged in them we can be 100% engaged and still we set our lives up so that time gets sucked away from us by things that are actually less important to us and more important to some algorithm and a businesses’ bottomline.
There is so much dumbness in the world already. Let’s not add to it. Let’s do more of what we know is good for us and less of what we know are doomed to regret.
He mentioned that one of his goals for the year was to find and pursue the thing that most makes “time melt” for him. As he explained it, when time melts, that’s when he knows he is doing what he loves and fully engages him.
Joseph Campbell said follow your bliss. Tony Robbins and a gazillion others talk about finding your passion. Flow state is the term of the moment in peak performance circles.
At the end of the day it’s all the same sentiment. Still, it’s important to find the words that resonate truthfully with us.
Sam found the words that work for him and that will pull him toward his goals.
Once he found the right words, it turned out that he already knew what makes time melt for him. Music.
It’s interesting that he had a goal to find out what he already knew. Once we started talking about what it might be that makes time melt for him, he clearly and succinctly identified it in seconds.
I find the same is true for me. I know but I don’t do.
Why do we make it so hard to do the things that engage us fully?
Seems like it should be so obvious to us that we would just prioritize it. Right?
For both of us, the answer was staring us right in the face and still we weren’t going for it. Not to say that we need to make our lives a vehicle for our passions. Some people argue for that but I’m not one of them.
I’m more of the school that thinks we should make “sacred” or “non-negotiable” time to do the things that engage us to our core because those are the things that give us the energy to make other parts of our life work.
I often think about how people from earlier times knew so much. Think of trying to read a book from the 1800s or early 1900s. How much latin do you have to look up (google translate I guess)? How many allusions are there to other authors and history and the philosophy and science of the day? A lot in my experience. How were so many people polymaths?
The depth and breadth of great minds was and is immense.
Look at all of the stuff Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo were amazing at. They were unusual talents but they only had the same amount of time as the rest of us.
What did they have that I lack.
Sometimes I wonder if it is the ability to focus and forget about the distractions around me. My mind flits off at the slightest provocation. I waste time. So much time!
I live in the wrong era to have a flighty mind. Maybe you do too. Right now is the golden age of distraction. Social media, binge watching, music streaming, books on tape, and a gazillion other things.
Personally, I need to make a special point to do just one thing. The temptation is to multi task. For me, that is putting in the time at a couple of things, simultaneously, and not getting the full benefit or enjoyment of either.
I think back to my childhood when I would spend hours and hours for days and months designing my dream houses and drawing them on graph paper. Or, the weeks I would spend designing a campaign for Dungeon and Dragons. Designing dungeons and populating them with monsters and treasure and surprises consumed me. I went deep in concentration and effort and enthusiasm.
And, I never felt like I was missing out.
Now my day is a series of check boxes. Yep, did that task. Check. Time to check my email. Oops, push that “to do” to tomorrow because I got “busy” doing a personality quiz on Facebook.
These days, I find it hard to make enough time for anything. I feel that there is always a time deficit.
That’s a feeling not a reality.
Trust me, for most of us there is enough time. I did a lot at the office today but I also wasted at least an hour checking the news or stock prices and erasing emails. That’s an hour I could have done something else. That isn’t even taking into consideration the time that I had to spend getting back on track after I was distracted or distracted myself.
And today wasn’t a particularly egregious wasting of time by my recent historical standards and still extrapolating out that is 9 standard work weeks in a calendar year.
If I earned all of that time I wouldn’t suck at Japanese anymore. It’s so obvious but still I find myself losing the battle with distraction and wasted time.
My wife is constantly commenting that she feels too busy to do this and that but still she found time to binge watch six seasons of Downton Abbey in a few weeks last fall. She’s not alone. It is becoming a badge of honor to binge watch. Six seasons of Downton Abbey is 56 hours…I googled the answer (when I was feeling distracted).
Is watching TV bad? Not necessarily. But, accepting binge watching as a way of life is not normal! It the result of science, advertising, and the power of suggestion being turned-on us to keep our Pavlovian responses in overdrive.
Most of our busyness is choice. It’s poor prioritizing. It’s not having a plan. Things are complicated by how much money and effort is poured into playing our subconscious like a virtuoso by people who we should never give that permission to.
The reason why it was so easy for us to figure out what makes us feel alive is that we know all along. We let ourselves be distracted and distraction is the easy road. We just don’t make it a priority or have a plan for battling it.
Understandable. The forces that want to distract us have vast resources and motivation. How many notifications do you have on your phone? How many times did social media pull you in today? How many times did you check CNN to see if the President did anything that you can be irate about on FB?
We want to do the things that when we are engaged in them we can be 100% engaged and still we set our lives up so that time gets sucked away from us by things that are actually less important to us and more important to some algorithm and a businesses’ bottomline.
There is so much dumbness in the world already. Let’s not add to it. Let’s do more of what we know is good for us and less of what we know are doomed to regret.