Killing time: 5 minutes at a time

Question – What do you do when you have five minutes to kill?
 
Those times when we are sitting in a waiting room, or standing in line waiting to be served. Do you pick up the nearest celebrity mag to find out what the stars are doing? Do you spend the time watching other people? Or do you get grumpy because someone is making you wait and you’re going to let them know about it.
 
A word – get over it. Just what makes your time more valuable than someone else’s anyway?
 
You see getting angry over someone making you wait is a little like dealing in double standards. Do you use every single minute of every single day doing what you know you should be doing? Of course not, and you’d be a liar if you said you did. What do you do when you are waiting for the kettle to boil, or for the dinner to cook or the washing to finish? Chances are you stand there waiting for said activity to finish. Added up, those minutes of inactivity constitute a good portion of everyone’s day / week / month and years of our lives.
 
It could be argued that it’s not worth starting anything because then the thing you are waiting for will be ready, by which time you’ll be part way through something else. And procrastinators the world over has hundreds of half-finished projects without adding to the tally.
 
Well can you imagine you would feel if you knew those few minutes were the last ones you were ever going to have? Surely then “killing time” would take on a whole new meaning. Thankfully most of us don’t know when our last moments are going to be, and it is interesting that we can’t and don’t go through life worrying about anticipating our last moments on earth. But what I would ask you to consider is those few minutes, in fact the time it has taken you to read this cannot be re-wound and re-used in another way. Whether we like it or not, once gone, those wasted moments have gone forever.
 
So before you are next tempted to waste time, consider this – as far as we know, we only have a single shot at this thing called life. Yes there are some instances whereby people have had a miraculous escape from death or serious injury – only to waste their lives worrying that they’re going to be stricken down with something else. Of course there are those other kinds of people who take whatever hand they have been dealt and make a whole new life. I happen to know people on both sides of the ledger, and I know which ones are the joys to be around.
 
So don’t get to the end of your life (whenever that is) wishing you could’ve done more, been more, seen more, used those moments to build a better future. Of course how you spend your time is entirely up to you, unless you live in a dictatorship of course, but then you wouldn’t be reading this would you.
 
Now the question has to be, how can you use your moments more wisely?
 
Well the first is being aware of what you are doing, and try and limit the number of wasted periods in your day.
 
The second point has to do with goal setting. If you knew what it was you wanted to achieve, you could use those few moments to do something that will take you a little closer to reaching it. You can read (or write) a book in five-minute increments. If you have a book outline – you know what you are going to say next – and voila a five minute writing slot will move your book about 2/3 of a page forward. Try it it’s quite interesting. Or you could spend those five minutes building a better relationship with your family.
 
But if you don’t know what it is you want to achieve then you will drift through your life in wasted 5-minute slots.
 
So next time you get “5” work out what is you want to achieve and then you will be able to work out the first couple of steps you need to take in order to get there.