Last night I was driving back to Edmonton from Calgary after looking at venues to host a "Discover the Entrepreneur Within" workshop. It was a relatively slow drive due to falling snow and I was getting tired of my usual music playlist. Digging into my console, I found an old CD with mostly '90's country music. Putting it in brought back all sorts of memories that I hadn't visited in a long time. Among them was a Clint Black song called "No Time To Kill". I remember listening to it as a teenager and not really "getting it". Last night a line stuck out to me like it never had before and I started to "get it".
The line went like this, "If we'd know 10 years ago today would be 10 years from now, would we spend tomorrow's yesterdays and make it last somehow."
That's a real mouthful and will probably take a couple reads to wrap your brain around if you are anything like me. In essence, it made me think back on all the time I had "wasted" over the past decade. I know that there were times where I could have accomplished more than I did. I could have worked harder to build business faster. But just when I started to think that I should make sure I pour tons of work into every moment from now until I die, another line caught me.
"No time to kill but time to change the kind of hurry I've been in."
If I am going to look back on the last 10 years and decide if I wasted time or not, I had better decide what is important to me first.
Sure, I probably could have pushed harder in business to make more money. I could have spent more time analyzing and growing my business. But you know what? When I look back, I am more than happy with where things are in that part of my life. I take pride in the fact that I spend a lot of time and energy enjoying time with my kids, family and my close friends. I see no "wasted time" in either of those realms. Where I do feel I "killed time" was in rewarding myself. Times that I could have done something nice for myself I often filled with chores or some other thing that really wasn't that important. So, I decided on that drive home that, over my next 10 years, I am going to make some time for me.
Look back at your last decade. What parts are you happy about? What parts would you change? Decide now to take control of that. Decide now to spend the next 10 years using time to the advantage of things that are important to you.
One last line from the song to sum all this up. If you get a chance, take a listen (And yes I sang this at the top of my lungs about 6 times over during that drive. My steering wheel is my biggest fan.)
"The highest cost livin's dyin' and that's one everybody pays. So have it spent before you get the bill, there's no time to kill."
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