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Americans have become the Children of Now.  We focus on the present.  We scramble about, always in a hurry, always looking for ways to save time, always seeking new, better, and faster ways to satisfy our addiction to instant gratification.  We live ever in the moment, and yet we scurry about so frantically that we often do not take time to actually enjoy the present.  There’s just too much to do, too much stress, too many obligations, and too many time slots filled into our calendars.  It seems there is never enough time.

I must count myself among my fellow Americans.  If life is a rat race, in recent years I’ve been among the most fevered and frantic forerunners, running so fast  that the wind shear makes my eyes water.

Recently I stopped running.  I stopped, looked around, and asked myself, “Is it true?  Is there truly a shortage of time?  How is it possible that I work so hard, spend so much time, and expend so much energy but have so little to show for it?”
I made a list of everything that I thought was important to me.  After some candid self-appraisal, I realized that I had two lists.  One list had numerous things that are actually completely unimportant.  The other list had four things that are vitally important to me – so important that I can’t prioritize any one over the others – and under these four things, I had numerous smaller things that contribute or relate to the Big Four:

1. Family
2. Health
3. Writing
4. Publication

I threw away the list of unimportant things.  I made another list of things that have to be done, whether they’re a priority or not (work, paying bills, cleaning house, buying groceries, etc.)  Considering these two lists, I realized I do not have enough time in one day to accomplish everything every day.  However, it turns out that I do have enough hours in a week.  I can accomplish everything I need to do and almost everything I want to do, every week.

I’ve tried this new schedule for two weeks, and I have yet to stick  to it 100%.  I’ve found that a few things from the unimportant list manage to creep in, even though I supposedly threw them away.  Video games and movies are prime examples of these.

But compliance with my schedule isn’t the focus.  I concentrate on the fact that it is possible to work towards all of the important priorities in my life every week, if I want to.  I have rediscovered something that many Americans have forgotten, or never learned at all:

Living a disciplined life offers a subtle and profound satisfaction that cannot be achieved in any other fashion.

Life is chaotic insanity.  Most of us have little control over the forces and events that affect our lives.  However, I can control some things, and I can control how I react to things that are beyond my control.  At the beginning of every day, I never know what the world holds in store for me, but I don’t stress over it, because I wake, knowing what I intend to accomplish during the day.  I have already identified tasks that must be accomplished and tasks that I really want to accomplish.  I’ve identified the general sequence and timing of these accomplishments, with the understanding that I may need  to change things if the world is being a bitch today.  I find reassurance and peace in this, to be able to say with certainty, “I know what I am going to accomplish today.”

When the day is done and I’m lying in bed, that sense of reassured peace transforms into a deep satisfaction if I can review the day and know that I achieved all (or most) of what I set out to do.  It pleases me to know that I finished what I started, and that my work has been done well.

I’m still just as busy and I’m still running just as fast as I was before I stopped and prioritized, but I’m happier than before, because now I feel less frantic or desperate.  I have a sense of empowerment and a sense that I’m moving in a chosen direction.  Beforehand I was running for my life, like some victim in a horror-slasher movie.  I had no direction, no sense.  I was just running as fast and as hard as I could, trying to stay ahead of… something.  Now I’m running just as hard, but I’m in a marathon.  I have mile markers and a finish line. I have rewards for finishing.

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