Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer
I think I’ll take all my change and put it into a bottle and then at the end of the year take it in and get myself a nifty something with my savings. I could bother to tote the two jugs of change I’ve got already stored up before the dollar drops into Monopoly money. Well, that was not where I was heading; let’s keep this positive for the new year.
Okay, let’s get down to it. After going to work, doing the family thing, and keeping the plates dancing on their sticks all said and done we have about 2 hours a day to work with if we are lucky….unless we are avoiding some things that need tending to, so that’s about 30 days a year to work on our own. We work 5 months for Uncle Sam, so what to do with our 30 days?
Well, it’s not enough time to become really good at anything. It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. That’s 5 years of usable time with on the job training. This 30 days is just enough time to get your feet wet. The trick is to narrow it down.
When I ask this next question of people, I sometimes get a dumbfounded response, “What are you working on on yourself these days?” Sometimes people will say they have never thought about it. What I mean by working on yourself is taking a good look at what you think and feel and making sure that your actions and insides match. We all have character flaws that need tweaking, and there is the need from time to time to put the car into service, the boat in dry dock, or the lawn mower in for a tune up…if you are a guy I guess. And ladies, you know when it is time to change purses…the entire ordeal can be like a major medical emergency. This is what I am talking about, except on the inside, on your heart, your mind, your sense of self and boundaries.
Well, that ought to stir the pot. So what’s to work on? Anger management, our weight, concentration skills, memory, attentiveness, vocabulary, hobbies, understanding, listening skills, tolerance, bias, insight, revenge, envy, there are a host of things. Now, I slipped in the word “hobbies” for a reason. They add to our collective understanding and expertise. The deeper we work on things, the more we can bear witness to them. Understanding anything deeply enough affects everything else we know because it gives us cause to think in terms of depth of knowledge, “quality,” as Pirsig put it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig). Everything has a deeper understanding, even simplicity. Have you ever seen how difficult it is to stay simple about anything? Fishing: pole, string, hook, worm, right? Purse: leather, pouch, handle, latch? People: eat, sleep, work, die, right?
What will you be working on this year in your 30 days of “free time?”
runningturtle87
