What's Really Worth It?

When I hear people complain about being too busy do the worthwhile things in life, I think about reasons why they might not have time. Often, it's because they are busy doing things that aren't important. While this may seem backwards, it's a trap that all of us fall into.

Basically, life is made up of two types of things: those that are worth the time spent on them, and those that are not. The key to living a happy and productive life is having a higher proportion of our time spent on things that prove their worth, and less time on the things that do not.

There are two main ways to accomplish this shift. First of all, you can spend less time on the busywork. In fact, sometimes you can drop these activities from your life entirely. For example, avoid spending time paying your utility bills by mail each month. Instead, sign up for automatic bill-pay. This saves you the headache of remembering to pay on time, and it can save you even more time indirectly—you won't have to go shopping for envelopes and stamps quite so often.

Of course, if you have spent less time on some daily chore, you need to make sure and fill that space with something worthwhile. After all, cutting out time from your bill-paying routine to watch more television might not be the best idea. (Unless you really, really love to watch television...)

The other method for shifting the balance of your time is to change an busy activity into a worthwhile one. For example, work. We all need some sort of income stream to support us, but if you can find a job that is worthwhile in itself, you are taking care of your financial obligations while doing important work at the same time.

The name of the game is to change the balance of your life from "busy" to "worthwhile." And achieving that is worth it.