But day after day
The show must go on,
And time slipped away
Before you could build any castles in Spain…
The chance had gone by.With nothing to say
And no one to say it to,
Nothing has changed.
You still got it all to do,
Surely you know.
The chance has gone by…
(Excerpted lyrics from “Day After Day (the Show Must Go On)” by A. Parsons and E. Woolfson (The Alan Parsons Project), from the album I, Robot. Song copyright 1976 American Woolfson, Inc. (BMI))
Don’t let this happen to you. It’s one thing to wake up one morning and say “Well, I guess I will never be Queen of England and I will never be an Astronaut.” It’s another thing to wake up one morning and realize that all the things you wanted to do with your life just haven’t happened, and that you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Do yourself a favor. Take 5 minutes out of your busy day to write down some things you would like to do with your life. Don’t think too hard about it, don’t rationalize any of it, and don’t spend too much time on it. We both know you have other stuff you have to do today. Fold up the piece of paper and don’t think about it again until tomorrow.
Tomorrow, take another 5 minutes with that bit of paper. Sort the items into Short Term Goals (“Christmas in Florida” or “Give money to [name of charity]”), Medium Term Goals (“Earn Black Belt”), Long Term Goals (“Own chain of Pizza Parlors”), and Impossible Dreams (“Win Lottery”). Remember that one person’s perfectly reasonable Long Term Goal might be another person’s Impossible Dream. Just because I will never win an Oscar doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to do so yourself. In an ideal world, there should be some goals for each of the areas of your life: professional goals, relationship goals, personal growth and spirituality goals, you get the picture.
Now, I will be honest. I had such a bit of paper. It sat in a side compartment in my purse for some years, forgotten. When I opened it and read it again, I realized I had accomplished much of what I had written down. By that time, most of the things I hadn’t accomplished didn’t matter to me anymore. Maybe the magic of writing such things down is that it forces you to admit what you really want in clear, concise words. Maybe it’s that writing it down is an automatic reminder.
If you really want to achieve, you will look at that list and figure out how to make those things happen. Break it down into manageable steps. Be realistic about what you can do, what you need help doing, and what you need to learn to do. Do you want to see the cherry blossoms in Japan? You’d better start by getting a passport, finding out when cherry blossom season is, and maybe learning a bit of Japanese. After that, all you need is time and money.
Don’t make excuses. This is what you want. You wrote it down. If there is something standing between you and your goal, find a way around it. Some obstacles will be insurmountable, most will not. Please, don’t let your life pass you by, one dreary routine laden day after another.
I did something similar to this. In my computer room, I posted a small whiteboard and wrote on it as many of the short-term tasks I could pull out of the swirling mass of “things to do” in my head. Sure, it’s the same thing most people have done in their kitchen, but it’s helped me concentrate on my tasks by not just having them bang around in my head and try to get six of them done at the same time. There’s still a few things on the list from when I first wrote them down in November, but they’re amazingly low on the list of priorities. There are also new items to replace the large number of things I’ve since completed and erased. This has come in very handy as a nightly reminder of stuff I really oughta do something about.
As for the paper list… not a bad idea. I’ll have to give that a try, stick it in my wallet, and see what happens with it.