The Sanford Berenberg Experience: Message of the Day

Good Morning,

As a kid I remember the Space Invaders video game which first came out in the arcades and then on Atari. The invaders, in a neat formation, started their march slowly to the side and then down on space closer to your base and then marched to the other side. Back and forth, closer and closer. Then to add another level of stress, the invaders sped up as they got closer or the fewer of them that remained. And, of course, when you clear a level, the next level is just that much faster.

When you play that game, or any game with the same ‘speed up’ concept, you have to match that speed with a focused plan of attack. When you have the system down, that speed becomes manageable.

I remember staying with my uncle and aunt in Brooklyn, NY one weekend and as we were preparing to go out for some visits, sightseeing, lunch and dinner, a friend of my uncle and aunt’s came over. He laid down on the couch and started playing Space Invaders. When we returned about eight hours later, we found this friend, still on the couch, still playing Space Invaders. More than that, he was playing that same game.

The increased speed of the attackers had become routine to him, and he just handled it in what seems like a monotonous focused manner.

Our lives are like those games. They are speeding up with all of our time-saving tools, increases in technology and how our society just embraces these changes, which causes all of society to pick up pace just like those Space Invaders making the step down closer to your base, and picking up the pace in the process.

We are doing more and more, and have less time for a lot of what we consider important to us. We do so much more each and every day, yet we often feel like we have done nothing by the end of the day.

Part of this is the lack of focus on what are the priorities in our lives.

In that focus, we have to do two things well if we want to take back control of our lives.

The first is obvious, but still very hard to accomplish. We need to stop doing those things that just sap away our time. For me, it is at night, before I go to sleep, I go the web and check Fox News or CNN just one more time to see if there is anything new going on in the world since the last time I checked 10 minutes prior. Or, it’s visiting YouTube to find and watch a video of some comedy routine or music video from the 1980s. And what do you see when you look at these sites? Other videos you ‘might’ be interested in. Next thing you know 30 minutes is gone, which I could have used to get more beauty sleep. And boy do I need that!

We all have things we can stop doing which we know are a waste of time.

The second is not so obvious. This is to stop doing those things which we like to do, which we need to do. In my current read ‘Simple Life’ by Thom and Art Rainer (http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Life-Time-Relationships-Money/dp/0805448861), the authors talk about how we need to thin down all the things we are currently doing, often which are ones we like to do. That we need to make tough decisions on not doing things which can sap our time and impact our lives while giving a less of a return our efforts.

The key point is that in stopping doing these items, these things are nothing bad. Like helping out in a charity event. That is a good thing to do. If you have five events you are doing and little time to spend with your kids or your job is being impacted, then one or two of those charity events may need to be handed off to someone else or even dropped.

So how do we decide which good items in our lives we should stop doing?

There are many ways, and one that I prefer is to look back at our core values. What is it that makes us us? And then look at our activities and rank them by how closely they align with our values. Then drop the ones which have the least alignment.

If everything you do is aligned to your values, then look at your current needs, and reassess under the lens of current needs.

To help us live better lives, we need to live more causatively. We need to divest ourselves of the bad behaviors.

And if that does not give us enough time back, we need to dig deeper.

To focus our efforts on only the key activities which support our values and look to drop others.

It could give us a lot of time back throughout our days, weeks, and so on.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
Follow Me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/sberenberg