I think I should have posted this before I put up the one on what can you discard. Why? (ha ha) because as I said, the list you’re using to figure out what to keep, discard and add are flexible and not forever. They will change as your “why” changes.

Someone put in the comments for that (my paraphrase) – he said it was too complicated and that’s why he retired so he could just do what he wants. I am so grateful that he put that because it made me think about it. My reply was that that was what I had been doing for the last 11.5 months (hard to believe I retired almost a year ago). But now I want to expand my knowledge, do the reading I’ve wanted to do and get my book out. All of this on top of 6-8 hour walks for the next 2 months in order to train for (and do) the race in Tennessee.

The race is important to me and training is very time consuming especially since you really do lose time when you’re older. So, here are my options:
1) I could just wait until after the race to try to expand my knowledge and reading, or
2) I can adjust my current schedule and eliminate some things I don’t need and work on them both right now.

I chose #2 because I have neglected my brain for the longest time now. When I was working I had to focus most of my time and energy on work related “stuff” – see, that’s part of the problem – what the heck is “stuff”? That’s hy listing all my activities helped me see how much time I was spending on non-productive things like games on my phone. Of course there are times when that type of activity is ok – for instance last night i was wiped out from a 7 hour walk so i did my “required 20 pages a day” reading and then relaxed while listening to the Yankees no-hitter. And I played a few computer games. I needed that time to relax. But to do it mindlessly every day is not something i “need” to be doing whenever I have idle hands and that was what I was doing.

So, you can see that the “why” of what you are doing is key. Not only the BIG why but the little whys are what I think we often ignore just becuase they are little. Example i just used – I had to examine what my little why was when I play the games. Am I just playing to keep busy because i can’t figure out what else to do or am I doing it to relax for a bit? And am I ok with with whatever answer I come up with. I haven’t been “ok” with the just playing to pass time for quite awhile but didn’t have the momentum to do anything about it. Now I do.

And my little whys are all based on my bigger why. In my case I have a few bigger whys:
1) Be able to finish the race in Tennessee (in July)
2) Finish at least one of my books by the end of July (you have to put a time frame on them for them to really mean anything)
3) Read at least one book a week
4) Spend my time learning not vegetating – this is vague but it includes things like listening to non-fiction audiobooks instead of fiction, listening to podcasts, ignoring stuff in my inbox that even if i read it won’t add to my life, limiting time on Facebook

I’ll probably write more on this because I’m sure for many I already wrote too much but this is important for you to figure out what’s important in your life and trying to achieve it with the minimum amount of stress.

Have a happy day – life is all about happiness even in the little things.