Sometimes when I don’t know what to do, I do something easy. Like unloading the dishwasher, or folding the laundry. Or check my email. This is a trap. Not because these things don’t need to be done, but because the fact that something is quick or easy to do is not really a reason to do it. The fact that something will only take a minute—not a good reason to spend your minute on it.
What if something only costs $1? Should you buy it? Well, it depends on what it is, right? Lots of things cost $1. Lots of things that you don’t want to spend one of your dollars on.
Before you spend your minute on something that might be of no consequence a year from now, consider what might happen if you spent your minute on something that would matter a year from now.
What is the most important thing that you could do right now?
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”
― Annie Dillard
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
—Henry David Thoreau