"...Never Confuse Activity for Progress!"

Its Monday all over the world - or at least in the U.S. and thousands of people are heading off to work, to get some rest.

"get some rest...???" Yeah, its true!

You know I simply don't do Mondays. Started off when David was a baby and I wanted to spend the day with him. Now he's older and Clare tells me that "getting up when the sun is warm is not an acceptable habit for a first grader...", but I still don't do Mondays.

Anyway, this morning I had a chance to catch the Today Show's piece on how "hundreds of thousands" of Americans now look forward to Mondays, so they can go to work and get some rest from their "hectic weekends". The report went on to say that stacking your calendar full of events is some type of new "badge of honor", more glamourous than a big house, or boat. Go figure...???

Nonetheless,

I remember as a young "budding entrepreneur" one of my mentors, you have heard me call him "My Rich Dad" before, Marc Fried had a saying that is still stuck in my head. Every time I put too much on my plate, Marc would say: "Sherman, never confuse activity for progress!" He, once again, was 100%, spot on correct.

It is way to easy to think you are making progress on your life's journey by simply shoving more stuff onto your "To Do" list.

The reality is that mankind was designed to do best when confronted with challenges, which must be overcome. Maybe this is exactly what G-d was speaking of in the book of Genesis, when He spoke about the "toiling with the ground" stuff. Today, there are very few people who make their livings by farming, but that does not mean that we do not have to work and over come challenges to feel "accomplished", as well as to accomplish. The problem is, it is way too easy to believe that simply "tilling the soil" is in of itself "progress". If we were to look at a farmer's life and compare it with our own, we may see some things that would be shocking, to us the farmer looks "crazy" for getting up at "O'Dark Thirty" every day (save Sunday) and working the field, overcoming pestilence and foul weather and the occasional flu bug simply to bring in a crop of corn in the Summer and Soy beans in the fall. But now let's look at what the Farmer sees:

We too (some of us) get up at "O' Dark Thirty" and take on a list of tasks, of which maybe 10% are our priorities, and the remaining 90% simply given to us by a superior, who is not really sure "why", and because there may be little to no meaning in our lives, we then begin to fill up our "To Do" list with things which sound good at the outset, but have little any connectivity or continuity. In other words, we choose to be busy, to "be busy". This event, that event, here a little, there a little - no cohesive plan, just activities - and lots of them. We think we are making progress, but this is what the farmer sees:

On "Monday they got up, spread a little fertilizer on top of the weeds, then got out the tiller and tilled up the ground. on Tuesday they planted seeds for pumpkins, but the pumpkins will probably be too early and they will not get a fair price because no one buys pumpkins in July. On Wednesday they went to town to buy corn seeds, only to find out that it was too late in the season and all the corn seed was gone, so they bought Winter Wheat, even though it can't be planted until October and 1/2 will probably go bad or get eaten waiting in the barn for the next six months. On Thursday they realized the mistake they made with the pumpkins and were able to fix it by ordering corn seed online and paying a premium to have it delivered within 24 hours, figuring this out took several hours out of the day. On Friday they tilled up the soil they planted on Monday, and then went through by hand to pick out the pumpkin seeds, which had started to sprout to make sure the pumpkins would not be in the way when it came time to harvest the Summer Corn. On Saturday they did all the "Honey Do" list stuff, and on Sunday they sat down and did the books (n time for Church, or rest) they were suppose to do on Friday, when they were out in the field planting the corn, which should have been planted last Monday. It's now Monday again, and its time to start in on the other field -> here we go again - Whee!

The truth of the matter is:
1) We all take on more than we should and in the process "Confuse Activity for Progress";
2) We all need a day "just for ourselves!" G-d got it right, a day of rest is for our benefit, not his.
3) We all (from time to time) take on things we should not (learning to say "no" really is a good thing). If we take the time (up front) to figure out what matters most, then build our life's "work" around it, we will be more productive, more "balanced" and the things we take on will have more meaning, because the reduced number of things we do will be done and done right.

p.s. In case you were wondering, yes, I am talking to myself ;) I too need a reminder from "Chairman" Marc, never confuse activity for progress...