Not Enough Time

"It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?"  Henry David Thoreau

Clients – and sometimes friends – sometimes talk to me about not having enough time to do good things for themselves.  Things like exercise.  Or meditation.  Or eating healthy food because it might take a while to prepare.

However, I believe that "not having enough time" is simply an excuse we use to avoid change.  Or not wanting to admit that we're lazy.

When I have these conversations I usually start out with the obvious.  How much time do you spend playing video games?  Or surfing the internet looking at funny cat videos?  On Facebook, chatting with friends?  Or simply vegging out in front of the television?  Or taking smoke breaks?

For example, I have a family member who admits watching four hours of television after he gets home from work.  But somehow, he can't find time to get to the gym - even though he says he'd love to work out if he had the time.  And I know more than one person in our company who'll play video games well into the night, then show up for work saying he's tired because he didn't get enough sleep.

We have choices about what to do with our time.  Most of our choices are based on our priorities.  If our priorities are to escape the present moment and distract ourselves, we have myriad ways of doing that. Our televisions, our cell phones, our computers, all give us an opportunity to escape into fantasyland and avoid the present.  And we somehow delude ourselves that these things are more important than making healthy choices about how we spend our time.

The one thing that we cannot replace is time.  We either spend it wisely.  Or else we fritter it away on useless distractions.

Am I on my soapbox condemning the use of technology to distract ourselves?  No.  I sometimes divert myself the same way: surfing the net, watching television, or talking with friends on the phone.  But I don't do these things to the point where I don't have time to improve my life.

I guess the bottom line is that it's about balance.

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