Everyone is so busy these days, but where are we spending our time? Little league, working long hours, family reunions, relaxing, playing sports, Facebook-ing, reading blogs.... the list goes on. We're spending all of our time. The question is, are we spending our time wisely?
Here's an interesting exercise that I tried the other day. Write down your goals. Seriously, grab a pen and paper or open up Notepad on your computer and write down a few serious 1-year, 5-year and/or 10-year goals (here's a cool place to get some ideas: http://dayzeroproject.com/). Make sure they are measurable, desirable and obtainable. Maybe you want to own a home, payoff debt, move to a new city, take a vacation to Belize. Whatever it is, write it down.
Next, write down the things that you spend most of your time doing. This is more difficult considering the fact that most of us have a very skewed sense of time when it comes to determining where we spend our time. We tend to think that we spend "all" of our time working and "none" of our time playing.
Now here's the interesting thing. Look at those two lists and see which (if any) of the things that you're spending your time on day-to-day are getting you closer to your goals. If your lists are anything like mine, you'll be amazed at how divergent the two are. The actions I was taking were never going to get me to my goals. So I had to ask myself the question, "Why am I doing what I'm doing?"
If you are not spending time on things that are getting you closer to achieving goals it's time to decide if you need to (a) change your goals, (b) change your actions or (c) accept the fact that you're not going to reach your goals.
So, are you working toward your goals today or just passing time?