Mornings are for important things. The rest of the day is for urgent stuff.
– somewhere on the internet
I get up in the morning and have my coffee. And meditate. And write. You might sit outside and enjoy the dawn. Or exercise. Or draw – or whatever our passion is, whatever we think is special and meaningful. After all, after this precious morning time, the rest of the day beckons.
These 30 mins or maybe an hour or more is dedicated to something we really want to do but cannot get to during the rest of the day – something important to us.
The urgent things – like laundry, like paying bills, like sending that email, or reading that article – these by their nature – of being urgent will happen anyway.
But then sometimes this happens:
I get up earlier than usual in the morning. All excited to work on my passion.
And then, just as I sit to, say write, the thought pops in that I should send this email out to this friend declining some invitation for tomorrow – it is so urgent. And I think, I’ll do this one things and then write. As I am sending this email out, I realize, I need to make the dentist appointment online. Let me do that – it’s just going to take a second. And while doing that I realize, I have run out of toothpaste. So I start a to-do list and add toothpaste in it. And then, oh, I need kitchen towels, and bananas, and milk, and some granola bars. Oh you know, my exercise shoes have worn out. Let me quickly order those shoes online. And once online, I start reading reviews and looking up shoes.
And then the household wakes up – time to participate in the daily dance and drama of the family day. But I am irritated and cranky that I never got to write, even after waking up early! All because of one email. I wasted my precious morning!
On the other hand, if I had suppressed that thought to send the email out saying to myself “Yes. I need to do that, but let me do that later in the day – in 2 hours. For the next one hour, I just need to write. After that I’ll get to these other things.”
When I can protect my mornings and do what is important to me, the entire day goes differently. I know that even if the rest of the day doesn’t go according to my plan, I have done at least one thing that I wanted to and love to do.
This prioritizing of the things which you want to do / which you like to do but are not urgent is so essential for our happiness and for our mental well being, However, in our busy, almost frenetic lives with so many things to do, this happens only if you dedicate a space and time for for it and guard it viciously – from yourself!
October 01, 2014