I read a book early last year and it wasn't the best book I've read, but it had good information and recently, I went to look for it on my bookshelf, but to my surprise, I couldn't find it. I thought to myself,
I know it was no treasure, but I couldn't have donated it to a thrift store already, could I have?
It was a newer book, and I didn’t dislike it so I began to search for it with no luck when I had the brilliant idea of cataloging all my books so I could easily check to see if a particular book was still in my possession without turning my house upside-down. So, during the course of trying to get a foothold on this new year’s objectives, I was distracted when I began searching for a book I thought was in my collection.
I have my daily tasks all laid out which will take time to complete, and for the last couple of days I have been cataloging all the books I own. So, instead of tending to my daily non-negotiables, I'm spending time recording every book in the house! It reminds of the story Zig Ziglar talked about when a guy he once met told him he had memorized every name of every county in every state in America. Ziglar thought it was an extraordinary claim so what else could he do? He asked him to prove it and sure enough, the man did it.
Ziglar thought it an amazing mental achievement, but he said to himself, why spend so much time, mental capacity and energy on such a useless endeavor? What possible good could come out of knowing the name of every county in America? Wasn't there something he could spend his time on that would be more beneficial?
That’s what I'm asking myself. I just spent lots of time cataloging all my books and for what? Couldn’t I have better spent my time on something else, something more beneficial related to my process of getting better results?
It's that damned Marine mentality, again, that was tattooed in my psyche all those years ago. We were always expected to achieve immediate and consequential results, without exception and without excuses. I still hear that drill instructor in my ear.
Grace Please
However, there is another side to that coin, one that is a little more merciful and gracious to me.
It's very early in the year, just a little more than a week into it and here I am already berating myself for neither meeting all my objectives I've set nor being awarded my rightful Pulitzer Prize for writing.
I'm going to have to give myself some time, especially since some of the particulars of my daily non-negotiables are new to me.
The fact is I can't change the world in 8 days. It may take a little more time.
