Guidepost Six: The Power of Vacuum (Aka Episode 49)
A Whackadoodle discussion in which my student and I remind ourselves, "If you don’t fill your life with what you want, you’re gonna keep getting whatever you get.”
I looked at her thoughtfully as she began packing up her books. “Did you ever do that time audit I gave you?”
“What time audit?” she asked, glancing up.
“The one I sent you the first time we covered the Power of Vacuum.” She looked uncertain, so I added. “You do remember, don’t you? You asked me why I called the guidepost Vacuum instead of Misses Budget because the guidepost is all about budgeting time.”
“Vaguely,” she said turning back to her packing. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I was working with another student earlier. She had an assignment for her budgeting class.”
She looked up surprised, “When did they start teaching budgeting in school?”
“It’s part of the new seventh grade curriculum. A six week class in budgeting,” I shrugged. “But so far the homework is pretty good. In today’s assignment, she had a list of fixed costs and variable costs. You know, like rent, mortgage, car payment, utilities, insurance, food, clothes, recreation. It was a very complete list of possible costs. It even included copays for medication. I was kind of surprised that even in the seventh grade, she had learned nothing about insurance.”
“Sounds kind of ugh,” she smirked, then went back to packing.
“It wasn’t the list itself that impressed me,” I explained. “It was what she was supposed to do with the list. It had two columns. In one column, she was supposed to guess the monthly cost for everything on the list, and in the second column she was supposed to ask her parent or guardian the actual cost of everything on the list.” I smiled, remembering. “She kept wanting to find out the actual cost before guessing, so she wouldn’t be wrong. She hates being wrong, and I had to keep reminding her, “No, you’re supposed to guess and find out later. Guessing is part of the assignment. It’s okay if your guess is zero, or wildly wrong.’”
“Let me guess,” she said, zipping up her backpack and finally sitting down. “You’re about to make some point.”
“It’s just that throughout the assignment, I had to keep from laughing. Her guesses were so low, and I kept imagining her face when she checked with her parents about the actual costs and realized the truth about how much her parents spent each month, and how difficult it was for them to come by that money. I mean, it was a really great assignment. A lesson that would hit her deeply. A lesson that was important. A lesson that she would remember.”
“And you think this lesson should also refer to how we budget our time?” she concluded for me.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I mean this is the week we are supposed to remember the Power of Vacuum. Our time is so much more precious than money, and yet we keep letting other people fill it up with things not precious to us. That got me thinking about the time audit assignment that I sent you, and how is was a lot like my student’s budgeting assignment. I started wondering if you had done it?” I looked over at her face. It was turned away. “My guess is you didn’t.”
“I did it the first time you sent it, but I haven’t really thought about it since,” she admitted.
“May I ask why?”
“I suppose it’s because I’ve been too busy to think about it.”
“Busy how?” I asked. “With things precious to you, or precious to others?”
“How should I know?” she grumbled.
“You remind me of someone,” I told her, and began sharing a story…
A lad with two goals once roamed the river. His mother told him to above all, be nice. And his father told him to above all, be worthwhile.
His goal was to be both of those things.
He managed the first goal very well. He was nice to his parents, nice to his boss, nice to his wife, and nice to his friends. He was even nice to every rat on the river. He was the first person that people called upon for favors. He returned every phone call. He picked up everyone’s mess. Everyone counted upon him to do what was nice because he always did.
“Ask the lad,” people would say. “The lad is a very nice guy.”
But the lad felt his second goal kept somehow eluding him, and he never had time to figure out why.
One day he met a wise woman who laughed out loud at his dilemma. “You foolish lad. You want to be nice, and you want to be worthwhile, but you have not made time for both.”
“My days are so full as it is. I have no time left over.”
“Who’s fault is that?” the old woman cackled. “You’re so busy being nice, you don’t even know what’s worthwhile.”
“There’s a difference?”
“You would ask such a question. Do you think that we have so many different words because they all have the same meaning?”
“I hadn’t considered. Maybe not, but what then is the difference?”
“That depends on how you define worthwhile, and only you can answer that question. I do know one thing for certain, if you haven’t felt it, you haven’t found it, so you had better budget time for looking. Your life can be filled with whatever you decide, but if you don’t fill your life with what you want, you’re gonna keep getting whatever you get.”
The power of vacuum states that nothing on the river stays empty for long, so you’d better fill your life with what you want, before it fills up with everything else.
Source: A River Worth Riding: Fourteen Rules for Navigating Life; Chapter Six: The Power of Vacuum
“That’s just a story you made up in one of your books,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“How do you know that I wasn’t basing my story on someone I know?”
She snickered, “And you were the cackling wise woman?”
“What makes you think that I wasn’t the lad? Feeling guilty whenever I said no. Always doing stuff for others without bothering to ask if I really wanted to do it.”
“You seem more like the old wise woman to me.”
“Perhaps I’m a bit of both,” I conceded. “But I have learned one thing over the years. If you don’t fill your life with what you want, you’re gonna keep getting whatever you get.”
“And you want me to use that time audit to examine how I spend my time,” she concluded. “On illusion, crisis, waste, or quality?”
“I’m glad you remember our lessons on Covey’s four quadrants.”
“How could I forget? Crisis is when I have an important deadline driven project, and I let the deadline get too close. Like a with paper due, or a bill that needs paying. Crisis is also any important, but unexpected event. Like when you need to take someone to the hospital.”
“And Illusion?”
“I think that’s when you spend your time doing stuff that is important to others, but not important to you. It feels important at the time, but in the end…” she let her thoughts trail off.
“And waste?” I prompted.
“That’s when I spend my time on stuff that really isn’t important to me, or anyone that isn’t important to me. Like when I waste a weekend on video games, and you waste a day writing Facebook comments that nobody you actually care about reads.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed. “So perhaps we both need to audit how we spend our time this week?”
She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Fine, send me a link to the article where you posted the time audit, and I will spend some time auditing my time every week.”
“Every week’s not necessary, unless you really want to; but in the week that we focus on Guidepost Six, it’s an pretty good habit to acquire. Just as a reminder,” I added with a wink.
“Oh shut up, and just post the link already,” she said sharply. “People have stuff to do.”
“That’s just the Time Audit,” she objected. “I thought you were going to embed the original article.”
“No reason we can’t do both,” I grinned.
Navigating a Whackadoodle World: Episode Six
Guidepost Six: The Power of Vacuum:
A Whackadoodle lesson about what it takes to reclaim your time. Including, why auditing 'how you spend your time' helps you to eliminate waste; plus, how you can MASTER your goals.
“Anything else you want to add before I hit send,” I asked before hitting the continue button.
“Well, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day tomorrow,” she said thoughtfully. “Perhaps something fun that doesn’t waste any time?”
“How about a Irish inspired meme that reminds people about not wasting time?”
“Do they have those?”
“You tell me,” I told her, and posted it.
