For as long as I can remember, I’ve been seduced by new. New technologies, new fads, new experiences, new ideas, new ways of understanding the world I live in. This pressure to keep up with the new while misunderstanding just how little time there is to keep up has kept me in a cycles of meaningless across many seasons of my life.
So, I decided to reflect a bit and share with you what I'm thinking about and learning right now. It has to do with time. How we think about and engage with it.
- Material things, the stuff we buy to fill our living spaces and show off to our social groups, come and go. On the other hand, experiences stay with us for a lifetime. Cherish them. Once you’re in it, go all in. You have permission to do away with distraction.
- Accept the consequences of your human finitude. We will all eventually die. This means that there will be many things we (actually) want to do that we’ll never get to do. Learn to let go and then commit to getting really good at something that peaks your interest. Let that consume your “free” time and be your number one form of distraction.
We can’t make, buy, or even optimize our way to doing everything we care to do during our time on this planet. Instead, we can choose to accept the reality of our finite life and then become relentlessly intentional about how use the time we do have.