And then, the world had a tragedy last week when Kobe Bryant, his daughter and several others died in a helicopter accident.
When the alert popped up on my phone, my heart sank. I'm not a basketball fan, but Kobe was a young man -- only 41. His daughter, just 13. My oldest daughter is 40 and my grandson just turned 14 so this accident hit close to home and I instantly thought:
"We never know how much time we have in this world."
So often we take time for granted. We waste a bunch of it on unnecessary things like worry, frustration, anger, jealous, revenge, hate and envy.
Each of us are born with unconditional love, great joy and no preconceived ideas. We grow into the person we become through our environment and experiences.
The really cool thing though is that we get to choose how we react to experiences. We get to choose how we think, how we behave and how we treat others, no matter what happens in our lives.
When it comes to time, we should all strive to utilize it doing things we love with those we love. Yes, there is a surplus of boring and mundane tasks that must be done every day -- tasks that can drag you down both physically and spiritually.
So how do we figure out what we should be doing or how best to spend our time rather than simply react to what comes at us?
For my consulting clients, I recommend doing a time study and this might work well for your everyday life too. A time study is usually a week-long examination of every minute of how you spend your time.
This is a good exercise for all of us. What do you spend your time on? If you take out your 8 hrs of daily work time (whether you work away from home or at home) and 6-7 hrs of sleep, that leaves us with approximately 9 hours per day of 'extra' time.
Stop laughing! I know none of us actually have 9 hours per day of extra time. We have to subtract travel time for work too. After that how much is left?
Do you cook? Clean? Do laundry? Pay bills? Grocery shop? Mow the lawn (or rake the DG)? Do you try to clean your own windows or wash your car?
Notice I didn't say anything about doing things as a family. What about picnics? Or a movie? Or coaching your kids' soccer team? Girl Scouts, baseball, track? Learning a new hobby or simply having 'me' time?
And we haven't even begun to track TV, social media and telephone time. Egad! How do we do it all?
When you do a time study, you will discover exactly how you spend your time and then you can evaluate each task and decide 'Do I really need to do this or could it be outsourced?' or 'Do I even need to do this at all?'.
How many tasks do you complete that could be better accomplished by someone else? For example I love to clean the house but the time it takes is better spent on marketing and networking efforts for my business so I outsource housekeeping.
What about you? Would you benefit from a mobile car wash service? A housekeeper? Do you enjoy waiting at the DMV? Or for the cable company? What else could you be doing if you let someone else complete your 'to do' list?
Have you tried grocery delivery services? Even I've started utilizing some shopping support services to save time, although I prefer the personal attention my Executive Errands® people provide because they actually think about the quality of the produce and look at sell by dates for meat they choose.
More importantly, they will call me if they are unsure about an item or before they substitute which no grocery shopping service has offered to date. (but I digress..)
The point is, we can all benefit by being a little more conscious of how short life is and make informed decisions about how we want to live this life. Do we want to be mired in a life of drudgery or do we want one of freedom?
So many people think they will have freedom when they retire but what happens if you don't make it to retirement? What if your life is cut short?
You know, I worked in a nursing home when I was in my 20's. I was an aide for critical care elderly people and I fell in love with all my patients. The one thing I noticed even then was that not a single one of them talked about work or errands or how busy their lives had been.
Every single one talked about their family and how much they missed seeing them or spending time with them. They talked about weddings and holidays and what it was like in 'the good old days'.
Life is fleeting, truly. Now that I am 62, I think about that often. I am already 5 years older than my mother was when she died. All too soon I will be 72 and then 82 and then what?
Take time to enjoy your life now. Kiss and hug and laugh and be joyful every single day. Let the small things go. Delegate what you can so that you have more minutes to love those around you.
Executive Errands® provides lifestyle management services dedicated 100% to enhancing your living experience here in the desert. Whether you need us every once in a while or every week; we have flexible plans to make your life easier.
For more information, or to find out how we can work together, please call us at 760.898.9604 or by email.
With one simple call, we can do or arrange anything you need.
