Tweet

You Can Watch the Video or Read the Words Below

The Art Of Living from scott aughtmon on Vimeo.

 

The Artist and the Amateur

I want you to think about this.

If you give the average person $1,000, that they’re free to spend on anything they’d like, then in an hour or less most will have nothing left.

Give a financial expert $1,000 and in that same amount of time they can invest it and set into motion the possibility of that $1,000 becoming $2,000, 0r even $10,000.

If you give the average person a pencil and paper and ask them to draw you something, most will have trouble coming up with something that’s worth more than something you hang on your refrigerator.

Give an artist a pencil and paper and then can produce a masterpiece worthy of being shown in a museum.

Let me give you one more example…

 

Give an average person access to a piano and they might be able to play you “Chopsticks“.

Give a professional pianist access to a piano and they can play you “Bethoven’s 9th Syphony“.

We all know that in most areas of life, it’s not just what you’re GIVEN that matters as much as what you DO with what you’re given.

But somehow when it comes to time and our lives we don’t seem to see this correlation.

 

Don’t Be Fooled By the Calendar

Author Charles Richards once said something powerful about this. 

He said, “Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

Listen to that last sentence again…

“One person gets a week’s value out of a year and the other person gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

We all have the same 7 days each week. The same 10,080 minutes each week.

No one is getting some more minutes or days than you are.

The question is: What are doing with minutes and days?

You are either using your time like an amateur or like an artist.

What good is it to be good at everything else in life, except living our lives well?

Richard L. Evans, the former president of Rotary International, said “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”

None of us knows how much time we get in this life.

Some of us will get more. Some of us will get less.

Our only choice is to use whatever time we get in the best way we can.

I want to encourage you to not wait to live your life.

Stop being fooled by the calendar and begin to use your days more wisely.

The 3 Keys to Increased Focus, Efficiency & Creativity

The hardest thing these days seems to be figuring out how to use our time wisely.

We have so many options, we’re overwhelmed.

It’s hard to know what to focus on. 

It’s easy to feel like our wheels are spinning, but we’re not going anywhere.

I recently discovered three simple things that can help you to increase your focus, efficiency, and creativity.

They can help you to seize each day more fully.

I discovered them when I was looking at the way people lived in the past.

Click here to learn about the “The 3 Keys to Increased Focus, Efficiency, and Creativity” recording now.

Photo by Ian Sane