How Our Daily Activities Add Pressure to Life's Deadline

We are all leading very hectic lives. Time is always less and there are plenty of things to do. Does it always make you happy to do those things that one ends up doing? The daily activities somewhere become a drag on our lives. If done regularly, the slowly they get into a routine and finally become a part of your life. And once they become a part of your life, you begin to feel that something is amiss if those activities are not done.

Let me give you an example of this. Reading the newspaper has become a daily habit for most of us. Most likely we would have picked it up from observing our parents doing the same in our formative years and the habit has stayed. The morning wait for the newspaper vendor to throw the newspaper at our doorstep is a routine activity. If there is a delay, it does give us some anxious moments. And there is a momentary joy in holding a fresh print and unfolding the pages. With the advent of smart phones, the news updates are delivered right into our hands now and much quicker since the evening's updates are carried in the next day's print edition. Consequently, the news reading habit has undergone a small shift in terms of its timing. The habit, per se, remains. And for some reason if one does not get this daily routine (updates not available or newspaper is missed), it has an impact on one's mood and behavior for quite some time.

Another pertinent example would be our daily dose of television. Television has become the most common activity for almost every person, albeit the timings may be different. The idiot box has literally captured our imagination, time and lives. Very few people have been able to slip away from its grasp. God forbid the day the cable connection is disturbed or worse still, television conks out. A pall of gloom descends on the entire family and a lot of discussion and debate will get focused on this issue.

The above example also tell us a peculiar pattern in our lives. Most of us complain that there is so much to do but there are only 24 hours in a day out of which atleast 6-7 hours is spent sleeping, 1-2 hours is spent on commuting to & fro from office/college/school and another hour or so in getting ready for office or refreshing after returning home. One third of the day is already spent in necessary activities. The next major portion of the day is spent at work (assuming that we have a job with regular timings)/college/school, a good 8-9 hours is spent there. What we are left with about 6-7 hours, less than a third of the day. But this is the time which makes a difference for most people.

How productively one can utilize this time determines how a person spends his life. As Robin Sharma has pointed out in his bestseller 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari', time is the most important commodity of our lives. It entirely depends on us whether we want to spend it in doing those activities which add value to our personal aspirations and goals or wasting it in non-productive actions. Time is not an abundant or never ending factor. Curtains will certainly come down one day on this most precious resource. And we will all realize its shrinking effect closer to life's deadline. We all have felt the pressure of time while working on any assignment or project. Very often we find that the most frenzied activity takes place closer to the deadline. And then if things do not fall in place, there is a tinge of regret as to why we had not started early or used the available time more effectively to meet the deadline comfortably.

Time should be utilized for activities which give creative satisfaction to one’s intellectual needs. Spending evening after evening watching television or on one’s mobile instead of cultivating inspirationally intellectual habits will lead to decay of one’s thoughts and creative ideas. Whenever we feel that we are running short on time and unable to undertake activities we desire, it may be a good time to sit down and think why we are unable to do so. An analysis of daily time spent will give us an indication where we are going wrong. Once we are able to identify and pin point to the culprit activity which uses up our time but does not give a value add, immediate steps should be taken for corrective action. However, it will require a lot of effort to break old habits. If one has fire in one’s belly it can be achieved. And the rewards are aplenty. One will look forward to those aspirational activities and every day will be an enriching experience. As I sign off on the importance of time in one’s life, I am reminded of the old adage – Time and tide wait for no man.