FollowWhat if instead of trying to do it all, we did some, most, or only what we could manage, and do well? What if we were more realistic, and less ambitious with our list, and made our goal, not just completion, but satisfaction. A job well done, achieved and relieved, take a breath before moving on, savour the moment.
What if we got back to being focused, on the task at hand, right in front of us. What if we were less fragmented and were able to give it our full attention. What if we were less concerned with how fast we could do it, and more concerned about doing it well. What if finishing was just as important as starting, and what if the process brought as much fulfillment as the result. We could concentrate on the person we are talking to, on the email we are writing, on the car we are driving, on the moment we are in.
Our brains are full. It is a myth that you can get more done multi-tasking; you cannot do all things well at the same time. Something always suffers. We split our attention, we don’t give 100% to any one thing, we can only partly give to what we are doing, we are fragmented. We end up not truly connected or fully engaged in conversation, we combine our efforts, which in truth means we divide our efforts. We miss part of the richness of our present.
You will only ever have 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week. Our lists are usually long and the pressure is on, to get through that list. The truth is that you can only achieve so much in the time you have, and with the factors, you may be dealing with outside of time. Perhaps, you might review your list, to see how much you actually ‘need’ to get done. You can still be strategic and clever, find ways to do it faster, smarter, map out routes, combine like items, employ shortcuts to aid your cause. What I am suggesting is that whatever is on the list is simply done, one at a time. I am not suggesting you slow down, just that you dedicate your effort, give your whole self to do one thing, and then another, focused on the present moment, what is right before you. What if we put ourselves in it, fully engaged, committed to completion, without distraction. What if we could actually see only one thing on the list at a time, didn’t forfeit fantastic for finished.
Along the way, we have lost our respect for time and for each other, for sitting and simply being. We have turned the flow into a tidal wave. What we sacrifice by attempting to put so much and so many into the moment, is the actual moment. What we miss out on are valuable pieces of important conversations. We miss the view, we miss the value, we miss the meaning, we miss the opportunity, we miss the lesson, we miss out.
Photography credit: Andrew Chambers Photography (andrew.chambers@live.ca)
