“Carve out time for the rest.”
On Friday mornings I wash eggs. It’s very manual and as a singular activity it does not pay for itself. Fortunately, the vast majority of our eggs are desired unwashed, and effectively sell out at full retail price. We are left with the dirty ones, a friend buys all we have, and since they go straight to refrigeration it’s okay for the bloom to be washed off with the stains. This is a valuable weekly housekeeping activity.
The chore itself could seem pretty monotonous and boring. For me, though, it’s become a bit of a mediation, an hour of simple, thoughtless routine. Best of all, it’s my chance to listen to Seth Godin’s podcast.
I like to tell friends that Seth is the most influential person in my life I haven’t met yet. His blog archive goes back to 2002, and he’s been a daily blogger much of that time. I found him in the summer of 2013 as I was launching Food Pedaler, getting what he shares every day since on my RSS reader. There isn’t another person I’ve heard from every single day. The profound positive effect his daily message had on my life inspired me to try this out from the other side, and I began blogging daily myself since the first day of this year.
What first captured my attention and kept me coming back was his ability to cut through the crap and deliver a swift kick in the butt to just ship — get your work to the world every day, no matter what. So when I heard the question at the end of the Akimbo podcast this morning, someone struggling to create meaningful work amidst all the other responsibilities in life, I anticipated old news. I should absolutely know better, Seth’s far too generous to copy and paste a canned response. In fact, he began his reply to Rex by letting him know how much he “loved” the question, despite it being one he’s probably been asked thousands of times.
His response was exactly what I needed to hear today. He starts out mesmerizing you with a quote from the late great Zig Ziglar, then gives you a nice slap in the face. Do yourself a favor, if you’d benefit from motivation and solid practical advice to do what you need to do, have a listen below. For me, it’s been a struggle to give my daily writing commitment what it requires, and coding even more so. To summarize the fresh wind it gave me:
Instead of making these things something to get around to, something I carve out time for, I must make them a place on the inside of the circle, something to carve everything else around. Something I always do, no matter what. The rest of my day falls in place around these higher priorities.
Thanks, Seth.
