Inspiration and Life

What Do You Really Care About?

Why are you so busy?

Never in history have so many had so much to do and so little time to do it. Busyness is like an addiction. Once you get started, it isn’t easy to stop. Busyness creates a terrible side effect — untold stress and anxiety. Will it ever end? Unless you kick the addiction, it will eventually take you on a downward spiral.

Too many of us are too busy working. We are too busy with the kids, too busy commuting. Too busy with work, too busy to make a meeting. Too busy to work on our finances, too busy to work on ourselves, too busy to volunteer. Too busy to make it to a school play, too busy for family time, too busy to make time for whatever it is! We have countless reasons for being too busy.

Yet are we really too busy, or are our priorities in the wrong place? Hmm. Do you need to think about that for a minute, because you are too busy?

Priorities and respect

Ask yourself, are you too busy, or is it a matter of priorities?

My contention is it is the latter. It is almost always in your priorities. It’s where you place value. You need not look much further. Accept the reality of the situation.

“Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.” Tahir Shah (1966-present)

When you tell your spouse you are too busy with work to make your child’s sporting event, are you not placing work above family? Work is the priority you are choosing, not your child. Too many of us put our job first and our family second, third, or further down the list, all of which are last place to them.

Anytime you put something ahead of something else, you prioritize it by what you value, not what is important.

An element of prioritizing is respect. Where are you showing respect or disrespect? In the case above, you are showing more respect for your work and less respect, perhaps even disrespect for your spouse and child.

Sure, occasionally, something critical may happen at work, the imperative being occasionally. When you repeatedly make the same excuse, it is something deeper. You know it is…

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. Stephen Covey (1932–2012)

Finding and making time

As human beings, we always seem to “find time” or “make time” for what is truly important to us.

“You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.” Charles Bixton (1823–1871)

I remember when I started dating Jane, my wife. There I was, a widower at 51, now 54 years old, up to my neck in work, overseeing an intensive R&D effort, filing patents, dealing with shareholders, the board, lawyers, employees, suppliers, and customers. I went from one meeting to the next, day after day after day!

Yet, I made time for her. I found time I didn’t have before. It appeared out of thin air! I am being facetious, of course, but I did find time. I was in love, after all, and when you are in love, you have a hidden ability to find or make time, regardless of how little you have. It was a wonderfully busy time in my life and career. Looking back, I am amazed I was able to do what I did!

“There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.” Brian Tracy (1944-present)

What priorities and time say about us

Back to the question — are we really too busy, or is it a matter of priorities? For me, the answer is YES! It is both.

We make room in our schedule when we need to. When something is important enough, we find time for it. What we do with our time shows our priorities. For some, it is to do nothing because their priority is to do nothing. For others, it is to stay busy because their priority is busyness. For a few, it is to get things done because their priority is to get things done. What kind of person are you?

As already stated, what you do with your time shows what you value and where your priorities lie. What you do with your time shows what is important to you. What do you value, and what is important to you?

Where your time goes, so goes your life!

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)

Final thoughts

What you do regularly or repeatedly creates something in your life. What is that something? Is it working on yourself or relaxing in front of the boob tube? Is it spending quality time with those you love or ignoring them? Is it building relationships or tearing them down? Is it success or failure?

What you do today, the decisions you make, and where you place your priorities and time determine what you will accomplish, become, and have tomorrow. And next year. And 20 years from now. And when life expires.

How do you want your future to look? One of having been respectful and thoughtful about what you did with your time and your life? Or a future with misplaced priorities, disrespect, wasting time on the wrong things, and the result this creates?

You get to choose. You choose every day by where you put your time and priorities. Choose the right things!

I leave you with the wisdom of a man known to be extremely busy and highly productive while making a difference in countless lives.

“It’s not what’s happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it’s your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you’re going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.” — Anthony Robbins

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Bill Abbate Leadership Writer and Editor in ILLUMINATION

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