What is art?

Neera 1 Comment

I thought I knew what art was. It was the paintings, the sculptures, the drawings and the beautiful sometimes weird and abstract pieces they keep in museums and art galleries.

It was also something which students with no real potential studied in college and university. The bright kids study science and maths and law. Isn’t it? I mean who with 90% plus marks studied arts.

Then something weird happened. About two years ago (2017 to be exact), I came across the work of three men, which changed my whole perception of art. It was not that they appeared out of the blue like shooting stars and enlightened me. I was aware of them, at least one of them and was subscribing to his emails in 2012, but he made no sense to me so I stopped.

The man I am talking about is Seth Godin. And if you are anything like me in 2012, I am sure you wouldn’t have heard of him. You see in 2017, I learned there is a parallel universe and it is called Cyberworld. And in Cyberworld Seth Godin is God. Seth has written several books, has been a pioneer in online marketing and has been writing a blog for more than a decade without missing a day.

For years what he said didn’t make any sense to me because I was a nine-to-five employee with very little time for myself and with blinders on I went to work, came home cooked, cleaned and went to sleep unaware what was happening in the parallel universe. Then one day I realized I was not getting anywhere at work. That there is a creative side of me that needs expression but I had no clue how. That was when Seth Godin eventually started making sense to me.

Seth described a phenomenon that was happening on the planet earth. “The industrial age, the one that established our schooling, our workday, our economy, and our expectations, is dying. It’s dying faster than most of us expected, and it’s causing plenty of pain, indecision, and fear as it goes.”

He argued that the guaranteed jobs won’t be there for much longer and people need to be creative to survive in the information age which he calls the connection age. But more than that, life’s too short to spend it doing something that isn’t rewarding. So aim to thrive and not just survive. He went on saying:

“Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it … Art isn’t about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art.”

He then explained what makes someone an artist:

I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artist, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.

Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artist, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artist because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”

Seth Godin

Seth is an artist too. He has created movement, singlehandedly, to help people understand the need of the time and how to equip themselves to respond to it which benefits them and the economy and mankind.

I define art as having nothing at all to do with painting.

Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.

Five elements that are difficult to find and worth seeking out are – human, generosity, risky, change and connection.

You can be perfect or you can make art.

You can keep track of what you get in return, or you can make art.

You can enjoy the status quo, or you can make art. 

The most difficult part might be in choosing whether you want to make art at all, and committing to what it requires of you.

He then urges you not to wait but be. If you want to be a writer, start a blog and write; if you want to be an entrepreneur, start a business from your garage. Don’t wait to be picked up.

“Our cultural instinct is to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission, authority and safety that come from a publisher … who says, “I pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you … then you can actually get to work … No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.“

He then tackles the question of why art?

“Because you can. Art is what it is to be human.” We human have been making art since the cave days.”

“Because you must,” he says. “The new connected economy demands it and will reward you for nothing else.”

Because art is scarce. Scarcity and abundance have been flipped. High-quality work is no longer scarce. Competence is no longer scarce, either. We have too many good choices – there’s an abundance of things to buy and people to hire. What is scarce is trust, connection and surprise. These are three elements in the work of the successful artist.

One kind of scarcity involves effort. You can put in only so many hours, sweat only so much. The employer pays for effort, because he can’t get effort he can count on for free. And the eager-beaver employee expands extra effort to make a mark but soon learns that it doesn’t scale.

Another kind of scarcity involves physical resources. Resources keep getting more scarce, because we’re running out of them.

The new, the third kind of scarcity is the emotional labour of art. The risk involved in digging deep to connect and surprise, the patience required to build trust, the guts necessary to say, “I made this” – these are all scarce and valuable. And they scale.

He describes what it means to make art.

“The joy of art is particularly sweet … because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It’s precisely the high-wire act of “this might not work” that makes original art worth doing.”

I urge you to read his books and listen to his YouTube videos.

In tomorrow’s post, I will introduce you to the second person who changed my perception of art.

Top photo by Falco Negenman on Unsplash

Building a bliss station

Neera

I need a bliss station. The place where I can retreat from the world and do what I really want to do – read, write, draw, cut some pictures and make as much mess I want without having to clean it.

Follow your bliss, says Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth. If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Discerning one’s bliss, Campbell argues, requires what he calls “sacred space” — a space for uninterrupted reflection and unrushed creative work. He recommends that everybody should build a “bliss station” into which to root oneself:

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth

Yesterday, sitting in the front porch, reading Anne Dillard’s The Writing Life once again in the perfect winter sun, I came across a paragraph which I had underlined in my previous read:

I write this in the most recent of my many studies – a pine shed on Cape Cod. The pine lumber is unfinished inside the study; the pines outside are finished trees. I see the pines from my two windows. Nuthatches spiral around their long, coarse trunks. Sometimes in June a feeding colony of mixed warbles flies through the pines; the warblers make a racket that draws me out the door. The warblers drift loosely through the stiff pine branches, and I follow through the thin long grass between the trunks.

Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

I stop. I close my eyes and transport myself to Annie’s pine shed. I see a desk against the window looking out at the pine forest. I want that, I tell myself. I want a study of my own and a desk against the window. I get up and review all the rooms. Which one has the potential to be my bliss station?

Now that kids have left home I have four bedrooms to choose from. One of them is already a study, equipped with a table, a printer, and numerous filing cabinets. My husband lays claim on it, although he rarely uses it. I leave it alone. Both children’s bedrooms are overflowing with stuff they have left behind. Their storage area. Their claim on the rooms they will never come back to but will never let go of either. “Leave our rooms as they are,” they have instructed me. I move to the fourth room.

The fourth bedroom is the best of the lot. It has an ensuite which makes it a perfect guestroom. But it also has the best view of a row of pine trees almost touching the sky. In winter, the sun comes in through the window. This is it. I want to take out the spare bed and replace it with a big table.

I come back to the book, while my mind is still making plans – how can I get rid of almost new bed we bought a couple of years ago, where can I source a table from, how to get my husband to agree. I start reading the book and on the very next page Annie writes:

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. When I furnished this study seven years ago, I pushed the desk against a blank wall, so I could not see from either window.

Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

There it goes. All the excitement of having a perfect study. I still can do it but I know we need the room for guests, who come frequently and need the ensuite. “You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a tool shed meant for mowers and spades,” writes Annie. I go to the darkest room in the house, one with the least amount of distractions.

I push back my husband’s massive Apple computer to one side to make room for my laptop. I plonk a corkboard against the wall with my cuttings. I leave the ironing table unfolded to permanently obstruct the view from the window. Inch by inch I occupy the real estate in the filing cabinets. My “bliss station” is ready. It is cold and miserable here. I have installed a small heater to warm my feet. Next winter I might invest in UGG boots. This winter heater will have to do.

Top photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Complete waffle day

Neera 3 Comments

Today is a ‘complete waffle day’. A day to intentionally write meaningless, useless, off-the-cuff post just for the sake of it. If you don’t want to waste your time reading it, I understand. You can stop right now. But if you want to go on a journey to find out where it will take me, you are welcome. Keep reading.

Idea of this post came from Austin Kleon’s Book Keep Going:

“Another trick: When nothing’s fun anymore, try to make the worst thing you can. The ugliest drawing. The crummiest poem. The most obnoxious song. Making intentionally bad art is a ton of fun.”

Today is my day to write the worst post. Aimless writing, without any subject matter. Reminds me of the days when I would wake up five in the morning, open the 750Words (a website based on a writing exercise introduced by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way) site and stare at the blank screen. I was supposed to write 750 words in forty minutes before getting ready for work. Nothing would come to mind. Absolutely nothing. The dread of the blank page, new writes call it.

Then, out of complete frustration, I would type a few words, something like, I feel like sh*t… when will I have something to say… And off I would go, on and on, pouring out my frustration, filling the page with useless, meaningless writing.

Soon the blank page of 750Words became my friend. I could write anything on it and next day it would disappear. I could go back to them if I wanted and salvage if there was anything worth salvaging, usually there was none, so I didn’t bother. That was my akin to what Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a letter to a group of high school students assigning them this homework:

Write a poem and don’t show it to anybody. Tear it up into little pieces and throw them into the trash can. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. That was the whole purpose of making art: Practicing an art no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

From Keep Going by Austin Kleon

Vonnegut would suggest his daughter Nanette that she should make a piece of art and burn it” as a spiritual exercise. “There is something cathartic about burning your work,” writes Austin, “Artist John Baldessari, disgusted by his previous work, had it all cremated and put in a ceremonial urn.”

I need a ceremonial urn too, to keep all my old journals and notebooks, may be to be cremated with me. At the moment I am not ready to burn my old notebooks and journals. However shitty they are, they are part of me. Each page reminds me of the day I lived. Daily writing is so addictive, the day you don’t write feels like the day not lived.

Somewhere along the line I developed the habit of dating each time I put pen to paper. Now I have started a project to put all those writings – some on pieces of paper, some on computer, some on the backside of to-do lists – and compile them in chronological order. It is taking time, too much time, because it takes me back to the memory lane. Many writers can’t bear to read their old journal, I enjoy mine, laughing at absurdity of my thoughts, fears and plans. That is all I have in them, my thoughts, fears and plans.

The biggest dilemma new writers have is what to write, as I have observed at various writing workshops, particularly if given the freedom to write anything. They stare at the blank page and wonder for hours. But give them a topic and they write pages and pages. I am an exact opposite. Give me a topic and I freeze. I need to do research, analyze, evaluate, form my opinion and then figure out how I am going to structure my response. But give me the freedom to write anything and I can waffle for hours. That could be due to training on 750Words or it could be due to fact that after twenty years of writing practice I still don’t have anything to say.

I pause to check my word score. It is exactly 747 words. Three more words and I am done for today’s writing. Then I will put it the ‘ceremonial urn’ to be burned with me.

So many books, so little time

Neera 2 Comments

There are so many books I want to read but it doesn’t matter how much I try I can’t seem to go through them fast enough. My reading buddies are always ahead of me. Today I decided to find a way to get ahead, and thus began the search for strategies.

One of my problems is that ever since I started writing (which was more than two decades ago) I have become a slow reader. I call it ‘deliberate reading,’ when I am savoring the good writing, mulling it over in my head, responding to it mentally, thinking how I can use this sentence structure or even the idea in my own writing. It frustrates me but I can’t get rid of this annoying habit. Then I found out that it is a universal problem for all writers. Amit Chaudhuri wrote in an essay in The Paris Review:

The number of books we buy far outnumber those we read. Again, the reasons for not reading are multiple—deferral, because of the paucity of time, is a common one. But a powerful cause for not reading is because the writer in us—I use the word “writer” not for one who’s produced books, but for whoever is possessed by the possibility of writing—takes over from the reader. This might happen when we’re transfixed by the jacket and keep studying it, unable to proceed to the first page. The image on the cover, its design, the lettering—these have thrown us into the realm of possibility. Once we’ve entered the story which that possibility engenders, reading the novel itself becomes redundant. We may not write a word, but the writer in us predominates. A version of the novel emerging from the jacket—or even the title—holds us in its spell. That’s why the crowd of unread books on our shelves is never, generally, a burden. They signal a possibility—not that we will one day read them but of how the idea, and moment, of writing is constantly with us.

The Moment of Writing by Amit Chaudhuri

How many books can one read in a lifetime?

Looking at the number of books being produced every year and the number of books that have been printed since the Gutenberg invented the printing press, there is a very little chance that we can read even a fraction of those.

Let’s say you are an above-average reader and read 52 books a year (although a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center found that adults read an average of 17 books each year.) Assuming you started reading at the age of ten and you continue to read one book a week till you turn 85, that would mean (75 X 52 = 3900) you will be able to read, at the most, 4000 books in your lifetime.

When you come to think of it, it is nothing.

According to Google’s advanced algorithms, there are 130 million books, 129,864,880, to be exact, in the world (reported by Ben Parr).

It means that you need to be awfully selective of what you read.

You need to be strategic about what you read rather than what you can get your hands on i.e. books bought on sale or got from the library because they happen to be displayed when you walked in.

What books should you read?

I found the best strategy to select what books to read in How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, written by the University of Paris literature professor Pierre Bayard.

“There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.”

Pierre Bayard

In this tongue-in-cheek book, Professor Bayard points out that we think of books in two simple categories “books we have read” and “books we haven’t read.” But in fact, there are several more categories. He suggests the following:

  • books we’ve read
  • books we’ve skimmed
  • books we’ve heard about
  • books we’ve forgotten
  • books we’ve never opened.

Prof Bayard argues that we shouldn’t be ashamed of not having read everything, and that talking about books you only heard about should be more open and natural. It is better to strive to think about the ideas within the books – even if you only heard of them – than being a walking encyclopedia of citations.

He has a classification system to keep track of how he had interacted with the books in the past.

  • UB book unknown to me
  • SB book I have skimmed
  • HB book I have heard about
  • FB book I have forgotten
  • ++ extremely positive opinion
  • + positive opinion
  • – negative opinion
  • – – extremely negative opinion

I find this classification an excellent way to categorize the books on my bookshelves particularly the unread ones and this way figuring out which ones I want to skim through, which ones I want to read and which ones I want to give away to charity.

How fast you can read?

One way to go through more books is to read fast. Staples collected speed reading data as part of an advertising campaign for selling e-readers. The campaign also included a speed reading tool that is still available to try. Go ahead and take the test to see how fast you read.

Kevan Lee in The Art of Reading, Remembering, and Retaining More Books recommends five ways to read more books including speed reading through new technology. Spritz and Blinkist take unique approaches to help you read more — one helps you read faster and the other helps you digest books quicker.

Use eReaders and Audiobooks

For a long time, I remained loyal to physically books giving arguments like, I like to hold a book in hand, I like to underline it, I can easily pull it out from my bookshelf whenever I need to refer to it…

Then a few years ago I bought a Kindle. I have been carrying it with my holidays and have never felt short of books. I can read multiple books on it, just like I do at home, depending upon my mood. Kindle is also a great source of old classic books that you can get for one dollar.

Recently, I took membership of Audible and now I have become a fan of it. I am listening to it in the gym while walking and cooking. I can easily go through a book in five days.

Now I have divided the books into three categories. Books I want to listen to I buy them on Audible, books I want to read I buy them on Kindle or get them from the public library and books I want to keep I buy physical copies.

Strategies to go through more books

John Rampton gives 25 strategies in his post 25 Expert Tips to Reading WAY More Books This Year I picked five out of those to incorporate in my strategy.

  1. Set a dedicated reading time. For me, it is at night. Sleeping with a good book is the best thing in the world.
  2. Read at least 20 pages. This can be done in between chores and whenever I have a few spare minutes.
  3. Read in Sprint. This strategy involves setting up a timer for twenty minutes and read fast. Knowing the timer is on will keep me from distractions.
  4. Quit books you don’t like early on. This is something I really need to do. I keep hanging on to books I know I should let go.
  5. Build a reading list for the year on Goodreads and let it help you reach your goal by prompting you titles related to your previous choices.

Here it is, my strategies to go through more books.

Do you have any more suggestions for me? What are your reading habits? Please share them with me through the comments section.

How to find purpose of your life

Neera 1 Comment

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” writer Robert Byrne has summed up such a complex subject in one line.

Ever since humans invented languages and started expressing their thoughts in words they have been asking questions such as – who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Is there any higher purpose I need to fulfill?

Earning a living and raising children can’t be the purpose of life of human life. It could be the purpose of animals’ life. Humans are designed with much more intelligence, much more empathy, much more love, and care. We ought to serve a higher purpose in the universe. That much is clear. What is not clear is what is that purpose.

Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

In other words, each human being has to find meaning in his own life. No one is going to give it to them, not even the almighty god (although some religious being might beg to differ here, that is fine, they can believe in god’s calling, they still have something to contribute towards it as you will find out later in the article).

What is the difference between the meaning of life and the purpose of life? I am glad you asked because Pablo Picasso answered it about seven decades ago:

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. – Pablo Picasso

If you want to live a happy, fulfilling and worthy life you need to find the purpose of your life. Without it, your life will be rudderless and incomplete. If you buy that you have some work to do.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But if you don’t, no need to despair. A vast majority of people don’t indulge in philosophy and are perfectly happy chasing the pleasure and satisfaction from their daily activities – however mundane or heroic they may be. You can stop reading right now.

For those of you who believe that self-actualization is an attainable aim and that there is a higher purpose for their existence, you are at the right place. Continue reading. I have good news for you.

Your purpose is not something you don’t need to make up. It’s already there. You only have to uncover it. You can do that by first finding our what are you passionate about. Take out a pen and some paper and start answering some questions.

What do you love to do?

What comes easily to you?

Once you have figured it out you will have an idea what your passion is. Not the purpose yet, just the passion.

Because even when you find out what you love to do and what comes easily to you, it will still take work to develop talent. Most gifted musicians still have to practice. I love to write. It comes easily to me but I have been practicing for years and will continue to do so to get better. If it didn’t come easily to me, if I was suffering in order to do it, it was not my passion.

Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction – John F Kennedy

Staying on the topic of passion, ask yourself:

What two qualities you most enjoy expressing in the world? Mine is ‘love of learning’ and ‘can do’ attitude.

And.

What are the two ways you most enjoy expressing these qualities? Mine is by inspiring and empowering people.

Write down the answers.

If the answers these questions don’t come easily, you can take The Passion Test. Developed by Chris and Janet Attwood, it is a simple, yet an elegant process.

Another technique you can use to help you identify your passion is to conduct a joy review. Simply set aside about 30 minutes and make a list of all the times you’ve felt the greatest joy in your life.

Once you have done these exercises you will have enough material to work with. Now the fun part starts.

To find the purpose of your life, let me introduce you to a new technique I learned not so long ago. It is not something new, hot out of the oven and hence untested. Instead, it is an old Japanese technique called which had been used for ages in Japan. It is called Ikigai.

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being.” The word “ikigai” is usually used to indicate the source of value in one’s life or the things that make one’s life worthwhile. The word translated to English roughly means “thing that you live for” or “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.

To learn more, and before preceding to work on your life’s purpose, I suggest you watch the following 13 minutes Ted Talk by Tim Tamashiro.

How did you like it? Did Tim make it clearer?

Now you get to use it to discover your own purpose with the use of the Ikigai model. Use the answers to the exercises above to fill in the circles.

The sweet spot in the middle is the purpose of your life.

Image Source: dreamtime

My ikigai, the purpose of my life is ‘to inspire with my writings.’ That is why I get out of bed each morning. That is why I spend seven hours a day to write a post. That is why I am awake way past midnight getting better at the craft of writing. And I don’t mind any of it. Rather each moment I spend reading, writing, learning, and sharing makes me immensely happy.

Once you know what your life purpose is, organize all of your activities around it. Everything you do should be an expression of your purpose.

I would love to hear how you went? Please write to me and share your experience with the tools.

How ‘not to’ waste time

Neera 3 Comments

Yesterday I introduced Roman philosopher Seneca’s essay On the Shortness of Life, and David Eagleman’s book Sum. It was a tongue-in-cheek introduction to a very serious question, where does our time goes. Seneca’s two thousand years ago assessment is still correct, we waste most of it.

Today I am going to take it one step further and explore how not to waste time.

Seneca says in a letter to his friend Lucilius:

Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius – set yourself free for you own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from your, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words – that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed and that other glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness.

The Tao of Seneca – Practical Letters from a Stoic Master

How much of time is actually filched away from us? After all we don’t have all of 24 hours of a day at our disposal. Most of it is already allocated to so called ‘essential’ activities of survival. We only have a small portion of time which we can truly call ours. Lets figure out how much exactly.

By a simple math, on an average we spend 8 hours sleeping; 8 hours working; 1 hour commuting; 2 hour cooking, eating and washing dishes; 1 hour on personal hygiene; 1 hour on household chores; 1 hour on shopping, socialising etc. that leaves just meager two hours to ourselves.

Just two hours! That’s all.

If we squander even that, no wonder our life is wasted.

What can be achieved in two hours?

Should we even bother?

Now, there is no need to be disheartened so quickly. Let do the calculation again, but this time for a week rather than a day.

On weekly basis we spend 56 hours sleeping; 40 hours working; 7 hours commuting; 14 hours cooking, eating and washing dishes; 7 hours on personal hygiene; 7 hour on household chores; 7 hour on shopping, socialising etc. That leaves just twenty two hours to ourselves in a week. That means 1,144 hours in a year, 11,440 hours in a decade.

Now we are talking. That is something.

Now don’t rush on to say that there are other things to do on the weekend which are as necessary the other activities. To keep the maths simple I have not included the public holidays and annual leave etc. which give you extra time to compensate that.

So you practically have 1,144 hours in a year that you can call your own. Are you using them well?

Seneca warns:

The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness.

What time we waste by being careless?

Watching TV and being on social media may be.

The research says an average person watches TV for 3 to 4 hours a day and checks the smart phone at least 52 times a day. Even if we say 2 minutes for each check that means 1 hours 44 minutes on smart phone each day. Let do a simple maths again, just 3 hours of TV and 1 hour of smart phone add up to 1,460 hours of screen time, chewing away all of your free time.

Seneca goes on saying:

Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not the purpose.

The Tao of Seneca – Letters from Seneca

By ‘doing ill’ Seneca means drinking or any kind of addiction whether it is substance, addiction, materialistic or social addiction, after all gossiping is an addiction too and biggest time killer. Obsessions come in this category too, whether being it is being obsessive about cleaning or perfection or anything in between chews up time.

Procrastination stands for ‘doing nothing’ and we are all guilty of that. We spend more hours thinking about doing the things we want to do rather than actually doing them. And most of worthy things are hard to do anyway so we postpone them for a right moment or right mindset or even for right cosmic alignment.

Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.

The Tao of Seneca – Letters from Seneca

‘Doing which is not the purpose’ are the activities that do not contribute to a particular purpose. We can call them ‘purposeless busyness’. Like organizing files on our computers, going through thousands of photos again and again trying to delete some and then keeping them all, checking online and physical stores looking for bargains to save hard earned money. There is good intention behind all these activities but they don’t contribute to any higher purpose.

Having a higher purpose and then doing activities that fulfill that purpose is the whole essence of using your time effectively.

Seneca writes:

Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replace, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of the precious commodity – time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.

The Tao of Seneca – Letter from Seneca

To well-spend your most valuable commodity, you need to figure out what is the purpose of your life. What do you want to achieve? What difference you want to make in this world? What do you want to leave behind? How do you want to leave this world a bit better than your found it?

Answer to these questions will determine how you will spend 1,144 hours of this year so that they do not go wasted.

How to find out that purpose? I will try to tackle this question in tomorrow’s post.

I will leave you today with this beautiful quote from Coach Bobbi.