How much of your routine is preventing you from reaching your goals and dreams? Or more precisely, what are you willing to give up and say no to in order to succeed? To find the time you need.
That’s the question I asked myself on Friday and this time I listened to my answer instead of brushing it aside. So easy to do as it flashed past in a instant.
I love writing on The Quantum Garden Website but write much less than I’d like because I don’t have time to do it properly. Therefore, and perhaps non-intuitively, blogging is something I choose to stop until I have time. You see the commitment to readers is more than typing. The recent upgrade to WordPress 3 has stolen at least 5 hours. They could have been better spent working towards earning my financial freedom so that I can write all day if I choose. Do my valued reader this will be the last post for a while. I will still be on Twitter.
There are other tasks and projects valued to me that I now realise are taking too much time. Or at least interfering with progress towards my dreams. Each is a commitment I’ve made to myself and I find I need to honour them before other things. Partly because of the effort already invested. The good news it was me who made the initial commitment so I have full and unhindered power to renegotiate or declare completion. This blog post is a public declaration of my recommitments .
Renegotiating smaller tasks links to a habit I have of wanting to finish them in order to create space for large tasks. Eventually all I achieve are small ones.
In addition to a halt on blogging I put my photo cataloguing on hold.1 Though justifiably proud of having catalogued 15,000+ family photos and video clips with date, location description, GPS coordinates, event and people in them it distracts me and can wait until I have more capacity. As one of those tasks that never ends, I’ll keep up only the essentials of backup.
There are similar commitments I have around music in iTunes and my DVD/Blu-ray library.
Then there are books unread, movies unseen, podcasts unheard and games unplayed. I find myself working relentlessly trying to finish lists that grow quicker than I can keep up. Kind of like Lucy on the assembly line. All I generate are more ideas of projects to complete. Valuable for sure but costly when compared to what I’m missing.
I will however keep my 50 Book Challenge lists up to date. It’s easy to and provides a useful record.
Until I have the time to write and serve you better take care.
David