I was at the bookstore the other day and could not find any novel worth reading. And so I chose instead to get M. Scott Peck’s the Road Less Traveled. My self-confessed self-help junkie friends had convinced me that it was worth the read. I tend to stay clear of self-help books partly because I hate being told what to do by a stranger and partly because I find that there will always be one book that completely negates another. But Scott Peck’s book was different. I had encountered some of his ideas about love in our required readings in college and found them to be quite brilliant. So I brought his book home (after paying for it, of course).
I’ve barely reached page 50 and have found it to be a very interesting read, indeed. One of the things that he talks about his how people invest time in what they think is important. He says that people take the time to learn about things that matter to them. If for example, I found it essential to spend a certain number of hours a day to keep myself fit, I would take the time to actually visit the gym and lift some weights or do the treadmill. Or if I really wanted to learn how to dance I would enroll in weekly lessons. It makes perfect sense. Doctors spend more than 10 years of their lives studying for their field. Lawyers, dancers, artists, writers and all other craftsmen master their skills because they spend time on them.
So that got me thinking about what I spent the most time on every day. If I were to make a pie chart what would have the biggest chunk? Would it be family? Work? Relationships? Food? Self-actualization? And would the biggest chunk really reflect what I consider to be most important or would I find that I spent a wasteful amount of time on useless things? How much do I invest in the things that really matter and the things that don’t?
I must confess that a greater part of my day is spent in merely managing my time rather than investing it. I often find myself thinking of the most efficient way of going about my day rather than asking myself if I should do so many things. So, sometimes, a day could actually go by where I feel completely tired and yet somehow not feel a sense of having accomplished something. But there are days, too, when I feel as though I have done so little and yet accomplished much. The difference, I am starting to learn, is not so much in what we actually do but in why we do what we do.
Time wasted or invested depends not in events but rather in purpose. A man who feels the need to look well and dress well will not mind the hour he spends shopping for clothes. On the other hand, a man who finds that self-expression through his art is important would rather spend five minutes picking out a shirt and the other 55 painting on a canvas. So it all boils down to priorities. Only sometimes, we often forget that.
We spend much of our days lamenting the fact that there isn’t time to do everything when really it’s not a matter of not having enough time but rather not taking the time to think about what we really should be doing about the time we have on our hands.