Why Less Borrow from Tomorrow

12/29/2021

Dear Why Team member,
I hope you enjoyed the holidays and are excited about the New Year.

Audio: 🗣

An insight came to me over the holidays as I found myself staying up later than usual to get more accomplished- especially related to Christmas and the late night wrapping of presents. First, I was grateful to have the opportunity to wrap/mail presents to dear ones. Second, was a fuller recognition that a price is always paid when we deviate from the disciplines that best fuel our lives and ambitions. In other words any cheat comes at a price and we would do well to fully recognize this brutal truth. Certainly there are times that call for changes in schedule and are well worth the deviation; everything in moderation including moderation. ;-)

The idea here is that when we more accurately weigh the cost, we make better decisions.

Consider those early years in your life when you stayed out late during a work week, having drinks and the time of your life. A discipline of mine was to not ever let that be an excuse to call into work sick the next day, that if I was going to have that fun, I was also going to pay the price the next morning. How many mornings did I feel physically terrible at work before I started making better decisions?
It can take us a long time to humble ourselves enough to learn that maybe I best wait till the end of the week to have a Saturday or Sunday to recover. And then how long did it take for me to realize the price I was paying on my weekends might just be more price than I want to pay? And of course the responsibilities that come with marriage and children can significantly increase the cost.

I think by now you’re getting the drift of this week’s message.

Let’s make this New Year of 2022 our Best Year Ever, by considering more than ever the price we are paying with our incredibly valuable time and attention.

These weekly blogs often consider the quality of the material we read and see and how it affects our attitudes about life, work, past and future, but this recent awakening for me was profound in its simplicity:

Why Less Borrow
from Tomorrow

Consider the behavior that borrows from tomorrow and is it worth the price?

Throughout my life I have tried to improve the productivity of a day by borrowing time from tomorrow- which of course means a payback tomorrow - which can lead to another borrow from tomorrow actually building up a debt both physically and mentally. This is often the pattern that leads to burn-out and then a reactive recovery forced upon us via illness and/or dis-ease.

Early in my career it was common for me to crash and burn via a weakened immune system, the subsequent cold and forced time in bed to payback all the borrowing I had done up to that point.

How much more productive would we be in the New Year if we were more proactive and less reactive?

Life has its lessons and then it brings us the test to see how well we have learned; and just like school, if we fail the test we stay in the class to receive the lessons again and again until we pass the test necessary to graduate to the next level of study. If you think you’re out of school, think again because as a friend shared with me recently on the mountains of Mexico:
Every Day is a School Day

So how about a graduation into the Best Year of our Life in 2022?
based on the simple yet powerful awareness related to
Why Less Borrow From Tomorrow and turn it on its head with
Why More Invest
to Be Your Best!

Consider the powerful mindset of investing in a more productive tomorrow via the choices we make today. In what new ways could you leverage the gift of today that would yield an even more productive tomorrow?!

A perfect, powerful and simple example that could be an absolute game-changer for many in 2022 is simply getting to bed earlier for an earlier rise and more productive start to tomorrow.

We all know how a day is improved when it has an earlier more productive start. Nothing like an unproductive start to a day to fuel a reactive mindset of trying to catch up which can lead to a later night of work trying to make up for the deficit - the often chosen borrow from tomorrow.

How about we make 2022 our
Best Year Yet with
Less Borrow from Tomorrow
and much
More Invest to Be Our Best?!!

Happy New Year!!

Steve Luckenbach

Comments are closed.