To Inspire:

Last week, Matt Palmer introduced you to a new book he’s reading (you can read his post here). This week it is my turn. I’m currently reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. The title refers to the number of weeks of life you get if you make it to your late 70s, and the book gets deeply philosophical about time and how we spend our time.

The introduction to the book is titled “In the Long Run, We’re All Dead.” Throughout the book the author, Oliver Burkeman, works on  getting us to accept that our time is finite and to spend our time better. He shares some tools for embracing your limited time, because it’s empowering to do so. He says, “By stepping more fully into reality as it actually is, you get to accomplish more of what matters and feel more fulfilled about it.”

Oliver shares a number of tools and techniques for implementing this philosophy in your daily life, this is one of my favorites:

“Cultivate instantaneous generosity: Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind – to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work – act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later. When we fail to act on such urges, it’s rarely out of mean-spiritedness, or because we have second thoughts about whether the prospective recipient deserves it. More often, it’s because of some attitude stemming from our efforts to feel in control of our time. We tell ourselves we’ll turn to it when our urgent work is out of the way, or when we have enough spare time to do it really well; or that we ought to first spend a bit longer researching the best recipients for our charitable donations before making any, et cetera. But the only donations that count are the ones you actually get around to making. And while your colleague (or friend) might appreciate a nicely worded message of praise more than a hastily worded one, the latter is vastly preferable to what’s truly most likely to happen if you put it off, which is that you’ll never get around to sending that message. All this takes some initial effort, but the more selfish rewards are immediate, because generous actions reliably make you feel much happier.”

This resonates with me. I am terrible at reaching out to friends or even to responding to messages from a friend because, as Oliver mentions, I think I need to wait until I have a free few minutes to do it really well – whatever that means – and then the reality is I never do it. If my time is finite – and it is – I need to stop worrying about doing these generous things well, and just do them.

That’s my challenge to you as one of our four thousand weeks comes to an end – act on a generous impulse and enjoy the happiness it brings.

Written by Michelle O’Brien, Manager of Marketing & Communications