Life is a game of trade-offs.
Compromise simply is the order of the day.
You want to hear it another way, that you may have already heard before?
For every single action there is a reaction. Every effect has a cause.
Recently, a friend recommended I check out the TV show Boardwalk Empire. Currently, there are some 48 episodes of the show, each an hour long. It may be a good show, it may even be a great show, I can’t know unless I watch it. But, one thing I DO KNOW for sure; it is going to be a serious investment of my time.
In that same time I could work on any of my saved list of ‘sprints’. (Whenever I find a class, lesson, or a skill I want to acquire, I collect it in my list of ‘sprints’. Specifically, I visualize sprints as being 30-day increments, wherein anytime I have the ‘free time’ I can jump right into the chosen sprint for that month and practice away. There are some sprints where I will commit a certain time period to it each day.)
Some of my sprints…
- Play “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” on the Ukelele
- Improve Typing Speed by 25wpm
- Study, Corroborate, and Research Carroll Quigley’s “Tragedy and Hope”
- Practice Handstands
- Draw Portraits with Left Hand
- Practice Yoga
- Study Level 1 of Rosetta Stone Latin
- Complete Coursera course “Introduction To Public Speaking”
- What Do You Want To Learn About? What Do You Want To See Improved In Your Life?
In that 48 hours, how many book pages could I have read? How many moments with my loved ones could I have celebrated? How many new ideas, experiences, and acquaintances could I have happened.
All that said, sometimes sitting back and enjoying a wonderfully crafted piece of television is just the thing that suits us at the moment. I personally see no inherent harm in watching a 30 minute tv show. I just want to be aware of the compromises I make when it comes to my health and my time.
What a great idea! I would probably think I were being preknad if anyone did something like that. Can you imagine? I would look side-to-side to see who was doing it. Random Acts of Kindness make my day….I had a $10 off of a $100 purchase at Target coupon that expired that same day that I couldn’t use (my total was only $40) and gave it to a mom with a few screaming, wild kids. She was so shocked! I wasn’t really out any money, so it felt like a *cheat* but I could tell she needed that smile. Hopefully, she took the $10 she saved and bought herself a bottle of wine. 🙂