Truth Bomb Tuesday: Be driven at the calendar, chill at the desk.
There’s a particular dance we have to do in this journey. A particular balance we have to strike.
We have to cultivate a sense of urgency without getting into a rush.
We have to cultivate a sense of urgency because life is short. The more time you spend on the rock, the more true this becomes.
And when it comes to wealth and escaping the rat race, every week counts. It’s easy to keep putting things off, imaging that you’ll have more time down the track and you’ll be able to sort out your financial game-plan later.
There is now later. There’s only more nows. And the nows of tomorrow are pretty much exactly like the nows of today – they’re busy, full to the brim with obligations, and sporting commitments and gutters that need cleaning and so on.
But too many people frit their whole lives away, waiting for that “more spacious” time, and it just never comes.
Not until it’s too late to do anything about it.
And the reality is that every day you spend chained to the machine, living a life that is not really the life you want to be living, that’s a day wasted.
And life is just too short. You need to sort it out and sort it out now.
So you need to cultivate a sense of urgency. You need to want to get it done yesterday.
But, the key challenge here is that we can’t let this sense of urgency translate into rush.
When we rush, we’re trying to get through our tasks as quickly as possible. Speed becomes more important than thoroughness. And so we cut corners, or we don’t check things properly and we make silly mistakes.
I see it all the time with the students I work with.
They come up with a deal that they want to charge into, but they haven’t researched the area properly, and they haven’t checked their sensitivity to interest rate rises. They haven’t modelled out their cashflow.
All of these things are potential killers. And they just need time.
But they’re in a rush, and so they’re cutting corners, just wanting to get it done.
And so this is the dance.
That sense of urgency is awesome. Life is very short. There’s no time to muck about.
But when it comes time to do the work, we need to slow it right down, and be thorough and meticulous.
And so I think we need a sense of urgency when we choose what to do with our time.
If the choice is between watching cat videos on YouTube, or working on your financial plan, you should totally bring a sense of life’s urgency to the equation.
But when it comes time to do the do, then you need to think that you have all the time in the world, and there’s absolutely no reason to rush.
This is a fine balance.
But it’s one we have to get right.
DB