K. Ron Jacobs
Table #30 of New York
Annual Work - December 2022
For this year’s Annual Work, I gave a teaching on “What Is Important to You?” The teaching had two parts—one was a YouTube interview of Sadhguru, a noted Indian teacher, and the other was a simple design I made for a daily planner, which was motivated by a feeling that I had been wasting time doing some things that didn’t seem very useful.
In the interview, Sadhguru suggested that the most important thing in our life is the fact that we are alive. He suggested a practice where every waking hour, if we remember, it would be good to say to ourself, “Wow, I’m alive!” and then smile. He said that by doing this practice, we gradually will become aware of our mortality and begin to realize that our time is very limited. He said that when we become aware that we are mortal and not immortal and that our time is limited, we’ll stop wasting time on things that aren’t really important to us and start doing what we feel is truly important to us.
Sadhguru’s suggestion was positive rather than negative. He didn’t suggest worrying every hour by saying, “I’m mortal; therefore I’m going to die.” Instead, “Wow, I’m alive!” is a repeated positive reminder that can help motivate us to do what we really feel is important.
Sadhguru is interviewed by Vinita Bali in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoBp9jM8fZo&ab_channel=Sadhguru
The other half of the teaching on “What Is Important to You?” described a simple daily planner I’ve been working on, which uses a 3 hole binder and has individual, removable pages, one for each day of the year. The day of the month is entered at the top of each page. I use a 3 hole punch to add at the proper date any important incoming paper or document such as a monthly bill or a letter that needs attention on that day. Here’s a sample page before any To Do entries are written on it.
The top six rows are for morning activities, and the next six rows are for afternoon activities. Individual “To Do” items are entered in these rows whenever they come to mind and are transferred to scheduled times below when the actual date arrives.
At the start of each day, the Morning Routine repeats daily activities—shower, dress, meditate, exercise, computer, etc.
Before developing the planner, I used to make a To Do list each day that included as many tasks as possible that I wanted to get done. When the list of tasks inevitably were not accomplished that day, I simply carried over the undone items to the next day with the result that I always had a frustrating feeling of never being able to catch up with the new day’s list that wound up being longer than the previous day’s list. That also was part of the motivation to develop a daily planner.
When I first started using the new planner, my tendency was to fill all twelve rows at the top of the page. I tried to fit in as many things as possible and thought it would be great to complete them all that day. But reality quickly showed that it’s only possible to fit just so much into a day. The result was that a lot of things didn’t get done, which made me feel very disappointed.
Gradually I accepted that it’s a lot better to plan only what realistically and comfortably can be accomplished in a day. I felt a lot better leaving times open to do things spontaneously or to relax and enjoy unstructured time or do something creative. Planning that way felt much more satisfying and relaxing throughout the day.
A more relaxed day would look something like this.
I see now that it can be very valuable to postpone a task into the future when it doesn’t have to be done right away.
The planner is a good way to see whether I’m using my time to do what feels important or whether impulsive habits are making some of the decisions about what I should do.
The idea behind the teaching on “What Is Important to You?” didn’t presume I know the answer to the question. I just hoped for us to have an opportunity to think and talk about the question now, rather than postponing it to sometime in the distant future.
K. Ron Jacobs