RACE TO THE FORK IN EVERY ROAD
Sunday, May 8, 2022
Chicken and egg.
One thing begets another or leads to another fork in the road of choice-making or triggers choices we make because of a perceived deadline or requirement to meet someone else’s needs.
We are the lone choice makers in our life, and when we explain our actions or inactions in terms of what we had to do or what someone else requires us to do, we are missing one key element: what we decide is either a decision we own or one we abdicate to someone else …
This progression determines what we miss and determines which we hit or which opportunity we missed. Deliberation, details, and decisions, fast or slow, are more about how we value our choices. Sometimes we choose too soon, sometimes we wait too long.
Each time we hesitate or deliberate too long, thousands of opportunities float by unnoticed – literally flying by. It would be nice to have an ‘always on’ mosquito net to catch every chance we might want, but who has time to stay up all night deliberating over which ones to chase and which ones to drive right on by …
I’ve put some things on cruise, and I’ve hit the resume button for others – each day brings me too many opportunities to use my time. It also brings the opportunity to abuse my time, but wasting it or letting opportunities atrophy from inactivity or from the apathy of not caring as much as I could or as I used to.
This thinking, for me, intersects the boundary question – the heed we pay, or not, to others sticking their nose and opinions into our business and the heed we pay to way too many things competing for our time, energy, and intellectual/emotional attention.
I have a framed statement in my office reminding me to do better work on fewer things.
Lest we forget, YES is a choice. NO is a choice. I don’t have time is a choice. I have the time but choosing to spend it on something else … is also a choice.