Sacrifice the good for the best
Hello friends,
This blog will build on the one that I wrote last week. The “Focus time” challenge from last week's blog post was a game changer, honestly. I need to confess that I only managed to do 2 full 1-hour cycles, instead of the three planned ones. This is because of a lack of discipline from my side: I procrastinated way too long on Saturday morning, and then I didn't have enough time for producing a full hour of music any more (still did about 30 min). And generally speaking, I was very productive last week as well: I produced a lot of music, I had one of the most eye-opening coaching calls in my life and I went to play tennis for the first time in ages. But while I was enjoying myself doing all of that, I realized that my motivation to do the stuff like school is decreasing.
Everyone tells me that it is really important. And honestly, I get it. I get why people are trying to have good grades. They want to have better options in life.
But for me, it kinda feels frustrating to do school stuff. Going to school to learn, going home to study again, then having to work part-time at the same time, it's exhausting. And in the end, I'm not really knowing what I'm doing that for. Am I doing it to work an 9/5? To get paid some money? I feel like there is more to life than that.
And maybe I'm just seeking excuses so that I don't have to study, because studying is frustrating. I am way more motivated to learn something about music than to learn something about mathematics. And here, my challenge starts.
It's a fight about getting my priorities right. And it's hard to choose.
The Sacrifice
During this week, I experimented with using focus time to at least try to become more productive with producing music, because I know that I love doing that. It worked.
But now I realized that I'm facing a way bigger challenge: The challenge of planning the things that are important for me. On top of that, I have to ask myself a question: What will I be cutting out of my life? And which responsibilities do I have to take?
I believe that time is the most critical asset that everyone has. And now it's up to me to find out how to spend that time wisely.
Here I want to introduce a concept from the book “Essentialism” from Greg Mckeown.
In one of the chapters, Greg talks about the importance of selecting. The most important question that you can ask yourself, when you want to spend your time wisely, is “Do I absolutely love this?”
This concept is very simple, but hard to do: You are going through the things that you want to do in life, and then get rid of everything that doesn't meet this harsh criteria. Obviously, you can't just get rid of school work or your 9/5 recklessly, but you can work out your priorities for the rest of the time.
I have a few things that I want to have checked: I want to be sportive, produce music, write this blog and for sure meet friends as well. But I can't do all at once.
And now the thing is, that I love all of those things. And here is where it gets hard for me.
The question isn't, “Do I love this?”
The question is, “Do I absolutely love this?”
Our challenge
With this challenge, we'll be trying to make every second that I don't have to work on things I don't like, absolutely amazing.
I want you to look at everything that you are doing or could be doing with your time. I want you to look at all the goals you have. Go through everything you want to do, and then ask yourself the question: “Do I absolutely love this?”
Let's say that you decided for yourself, that you want to do something sportive in your life, but you can't decide what you want to do.
You can do things like jogging, martial arts, dancing, going to the gym, going to swim or whatever you want to do.
Go out there and try a bunch of things. Go for a jog, go visit that dance class, go to the gym with a friend.
After trying out a bunch of things, go through everything you tried out and ask yourself: “Do I absolutely love this?”
Rate everything that you did from 1-10
After you did that, you are only allowed to follow the things that you rated with a 9 or a 10. With this harsh criteria, you are going to choose the right things.
You also have some things that you have to do and that you won't like and that can't be changed at all, but this is fine. You can learn to combine them with something fun. For example, you can do your chores (task you don't like) while listening to a podcast about something you want to learn (task you like).
So, your next step: Pick out a few things that you are doing, ask if you absolutely love them, and focus only on the ones with 9 or 10 ratings.
Always remember:
"You can do anything, but not everything.” - David Allen
Your time is limited. Make it count.
Do you feel committed to this challenge? If you want someone to hold yourself accountable, reach out to me via Mail (kimzo.blog@gmail.com) and write “I commit to the challenge Sacrifices for your future”.
My Song of the week
You may know that I love rock music. Well, here is another banger that I listened to more often than I like to admit this week. Enjoy!
Further Reading
Felt so grateful today, I just wanted to share this blog post again with you.
The one reminder that helps us out the most for this week.
Thank you so much for reading today's blog post. I wish you an amazing week! Let's keep pushing!
Much Love,
Kim