Week 36, 2020: Everyone is saying the same thing

Maybe you read a lot of non-fiction like me. Have you noticed, they’re all saying the same thing?

Scouring Vagabonding, you’ll find Rolf Potts describing a way of travelling which is about appreciating the world around you. It’s the idea that long term travel is in fact obtainable for the vast majority for us. If we just try to figure what’s needed beforehand, instead of dismissing it without looking.

Jenny Odell’s interview, Nothing in the age of everything, discusses how our time is monopolised by instant gratification. How, there is a power in learning how to disconnect fully. Even her book is titled, How to Do Nothing (and is next on my reading list). She talks of how, we as the human race, have fallen into a technological trap, where “every moment and every experience could and should be capitalised on” and the necessity for this to change.

In Invest Your Time, Matt Sandrini argues that the most structured people are the most flexible. That is, that providing structure and organisation to your life allows you to be spontaneous, achieve more and have a more fulfilling life.

Julia Cameron has you doing Morning Pages, and dates with yourself in order to promote creativity. Stephen King puts it bluntly on how to become a writer: “read a lot and write a lot”.

To make this succinct, you’ve at least five people, with their own worlds views. They’re all trying to make their own points. In reality, it's the same message in different packaging.

It appears that the message is this:

To be deliberate with your time, is to live your life to its fullest. To take control of the precious minutes you have is how you can live your life without regret.

And if you feel like you’re not? Then you have the power to change it.

This last point, of course, reeks of privilege. After all, choice is a privilege not everyone has. But we can control our goals. And with thorough understanding of these goals, we can set the ball in motion.

We are all able to do something about it. Even if it’s only five minutes a day.